Chapter Text
The tape rewinds back to Paul and Emma's wedding reception. Ted is shown trying to flirt with a woman off-screen, before the camera pulls back to reveal who it is.
Emma: “Are you seriously trying to pick me up at my own wedding?”
“Oh, this one’s off to a wonderful start!” Emma said sarcastically, rolling her eyes.
“This is why we didn't invite you!” Paul added. “Literally no other reason! Just because you do this shit!”
After Emma leaves, Ted finds Charlotte, who was nearby and heard all of that. She rejects him, too, on the grounds that her husband is at the wedding with her.
“Okay. Not interested in an affair in every timeline. That makes sense,” Bill remarked.
Paul nodded. “Oh, and before anyone asks, no, Sam’s not another crasher. Charlotte got an ‘And Guest’ invite, so that's why he's there.”
Ted then finds Sylvia and tries to flirt with her, but then he finds out that she's Bill’s girlfriend.
Ted: “How the Hell did this happen?!”
“I would actually like to know that, as well,” said Bill. “Just so I can take notes for when I get home.”
Feeling defeated from his repeated failures, Ted finds Professor Hidgens at a bar and vents to him about being single. Hidgens tells him that he deals with his loneliness by hooking up with AI women, like Alexa and Siri.
Ted: “Yeah, well, you can't have sex with a robot, dude!”
“Why not? Paul did,” Lex teased. Paul responded by reaching over and lightly punching her in the arm.
Ted and Hidgens continue to vent. Ted says he used to love hooking up with girls at weddings. Hidgens says it's normal for older men to long for the good old days.
“You know what? I never would've thought of these two as being the type to get along,” said Emma. “But they're both such pathetic shitheels that they actually kinda work well together!”
Ruth turned to Peter. “When I get back to my timeline, I’ll see if I can get you an extra ticket to the play! Then maybe we can introduce them backstage!”
Peter smiled. “Yeah, he might like that!”
Ted then begins to tell the story of his “good old days,” in college. He says he was once in love with a real woman.
Ted: “That's how I viewed her – as a person! Not just a collection of curves and crevices.”
“God damn it, why does everyone else get Self-Aware Ted and not me?” Bill asked with a sigh.
Ted says that the woman's name was Jenny, and that she was his best friend, but he was always too shy to confess his love to her.
“So, are all Spankoffskis hopeless around their crushes, then?” Stephanie asked Peter as a joke.
“Oh, like you're one to talk!” Peter replied with a playful eye roll. Stephanie merely giggled in response.
Ted further explains that he’d planned to finally confess on October 17th, 2004. But he passed out from alcohol, and by the time he’d woken up, he’d received a letter from her saying that she was moving away with someone else. She had a crush on him, too, and she didn't believe he reciprocated, so it was too difficult for her to be around him.
“Ironic,” Hannah remarked.
“Painfully so,” Lex agreed.
“To think, if one of them had spoken up sooner, she could’ve been my sister-in-law,” said Peter.
Ted: “I lost the love of my life to some pushy asshole, so I became that pushy asshole!”
“I think he took the wrong lesson from this,” said Miss Holloway.
“Yeah. If that's how he handles rejection, then Jenny dodged a fucking bullet,” Bill agreed.
Hidgens starts to tell his own story, but Ted cuts him off and says he doesn't give a fuck. He then pushes past him in the line and gets some vodka.
Ruth grimaced. “Yeah, I’m revoking that extra ticket I mentioned.”
“That's fair,” Peter replied with an annoyed sigh.
Soon after, the first dance is about to begin – they're just waiting on the groom. Ted and Paul spot each other, and Paul drags the former to the floor.
Paul suddenly leaned forward in his seat. “Wait a minute! This didn't happen!”
Emma turned to him and narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“This didn't happen,” Paul repeated. “I never dragged Ted over to watch our first dance.”
“Forgot?” Hannah wondered.
“No, that wouldn't make sense, either. We didn't want him at the wedding in the first place. Why would I care if he saw the dance?”
Paul then noticed something else that alarmed him: “And why did my clothes suddenly change? I would not dress casually for my own wedding! Something's not right here!”
As Ted and Paul approach the dance floor, the latter steps back, and an unfamiliar redhead woman in a wedding dress approaches Ted. His eyes go wide and his jaw drops.
Ted: “Wha–? Jenny?!”
Lex’s face scrunched up with confusion. “His college girl?”
“She’s a wedding crasher, isn't she?” Emma sighed.
“Crashers don't usually wear wedding dresses,” Miss Holloway argued.
“And one of us would’ve stopped them from taking over our dance,” said Paul.
Ted then looks around the venue and notices that the sign that once bore Paul and Emma's names now had his and Jenny’s on it.
“Woah!” said Ruth.
“What the Hell?!” said Bill.
“Okay, this has gotta be some kind of fantasy!” said Paul. “That's the only explanation for this!”
As it finally sinks in for Ted that this is now his and Jenny's wedding, tears begin to form in his eyes. He calls her beautiful and happily dances with her.
“Aww! This is so sweet!” said Ruth.
“Even if it's not real, I still love this for him,” said Stephanie.
“Me, too!” Peter agreed with a grin on his face. “I don't think I’ve ever seen him like this around a woman. Jenny must be really special!”
The tape then cuts to Ted and Jenny at their place of honor. Jenny says she has a wedding gift for Ted, and hands him an ornate golden puzzle box.
Peter's blood suddenly ran cold. “Is that the box from…?”
“It's the box from,” said Miss Holloway, shuddering in her own right. “I don't see this ending well.”
Ted looks over the box, confused, before Tinky's voice chimes in.
Tinky: “It's called the Bastard's Box!”
Suddenly, Jenny and the wedding guests all disappear, and the hall looks much more dilapidated than it did before.
“Oh God, my own venue’s freaking me out!” Paul said with hunched-up shoulders.
“Get out of there, dude!” Peter shouted at the screen.
“If he even can,” Miss Holloway added under her breath.
On the dancefloor stands a rotting old goat bodysuit who stares down Ted with dead eyes.
“Him?” Hannah asked.
Miss Holloway nodded. “Dead-on accurate. Just like Blinky was.”
He says that the box is where he keeps all his toys.
Tinky: “Tick tock, Teddy Bear! Tick fucking tock!”
Paul sighed. “Well, that answers the question of who the toy is.”
“Oh, God, I fucking knew it!” Peter put his hands over his eyes, only peeking out slightly so he could see what was going on.
“Wait, then what does the homeless guy have to do with anything?” Stephanie wondered.
Paul didn't have a concrete answer for that, of course. “We’re only about fifteen minutes into this. He’ll probably pop up later.”
Tinky grabs Ted by his shirt collar and lifts him into the air, proclaiming that it’s coming for him. Ted screams in terror. The tape then abruptly cuts to Paul tapping Ted on the shoulder back at the bar, causing him to jolt upright, still catching his breath.
“Okay, we’re back in the real world now,” Paul announced. “I remember finding Ted passed out drunk at the bar…or, at least, I thought he was drunk at the time.”
“Okay, thank God,” Peter replied, finally allowing himself to let out his breath.
Stephanie turned to him and whispered, “You alright, Spankoffski?”
“Yeah,” he whispered back. “Just got scared for a minute there.”
Paul: “Might wanna lay off the booze there, bud.”
Ted: “...What happened to Jenny, Paul?!”
Paul's eyes went wide with realization. “Oh, that's what he was talking about! Okay. I was so confused when he said that!”
Paul then awkwardly asks him to get his reports to Mr. Davidson, since he'd forgotten to do so before the wedding. Ted reluctantly agrees.
Bill turned to Paul and narrowed his eyes. “You thought that Ted Spankoffski was blackout drunk and you asked him to carry out an important work responsibility on your behalf?”
Paul nodded and grimaced. “Yeah, you teased me about that in my timeline, too. Right after an angry Mr. Davidson told me I had to work overtime to make up for ‘missing reports.’”
“That was around the time you found out he’d been absent, wasn't it?” Miss Holloway asked.
“Yeah. Although I'm sure Bill and Char already knew. They weren't on a week-long honeymoon, after all.”
The tape cuts to Ted looking for the reports at an after-hours CCRP. Unable to find them, he decides to print them out in his office.
“Wait, hold up, since when does Ted have his own office?!” Bill wondered.
“Since Mr. Davidson got tired of you two arguing all the time,” Paul explained. Upon seeing his friend’s annoyed expression, he added: “But I wouldn't be too jealous. The ‘office’ is really just a hastily converted janitor's closet.”
Ted remarks that he’s gonna be there for 85 years before falling asleep.
“With the printers we’ve got, he might not be wrong,” Bill said with a chuckle.
“I wonder why nobody saw him asleep in his chair?” said Stephanie.
“Or heard him snoring,” Peter added. “Considering he doesn't have his CPAP on him.”
Ruth turned towards Peter and raised an eyebrow. “You’ve seen him sleep with a CPAP?”
“I was the one who made him get one!”
The tape cuts to Ted waking up in a dilapidated version of his office, thinking it's only been a day or two. He struggles to open his office door, and when he finally does, sees a much more futuristic sight.
“What the fuck are all your co-workers typing on?” Lex asked.
“I'm not sure,” said Paul. “Some type of…holographic display?”
“Hold up, if this so-called Bastard of Time is involved…” Emma started to say, remembering when Miss Holloway siphoned his power on her tape. She quickly turned to her. “He fucking time travelled, didn't he?”
“Wouldn't surprise me,” Miss Holloway said. “The place looks very futuristic, and that is a power that Tinky has.”
“Is that why Sylvia was scanning shit before?” Bill wondered. “For ‘temporal distortions?’”
“Beats me,” said Paul. “Full disclosure: I thought she was talking about Emma.”
Ted stumbles into the break room – which also looks futuristic – and, after a while, talks to himself.
Ted: “Where the Hell is Paul…? Oh, right! Honeymooners!”
“Why are you only looking for me, when Charlotte usually acts as our buffer anyway?” Paul wondered aloud.
Ted then sneaks into a meeting late. A presenter is talking about a synthetic android they’ve created that will eliminate the need for a human workforce. She then reveals the android's skin wrap that makes her look like Emma Perkins.
“Oh my God, that's your wife!” Bill realized.
“I know!” Paul replied, leaning back and smiling at the screen. “Crap, she was beautiful from day one!”
Emma couldn't help but blush from the seat next to him.
Ted is shocked and impressed by the android’s design, and remarks that he was wrong about there being no robots you can bone. The scientist clarifies that that's not the android's purpose.
Scientist: “Did you hear that, everyone? No employee of CCRP will be boning the synthetic lifeform!”
“Again. Paul,” teased Lex.
“Please don't encourage these jokes,” said Emma.
Ted argues that boning the android will be the first thing that people wanna do, out of sheer human nature.
“Okay, can we please move on from this?!” Emma shouted, gritting her teeth.
“Hopefully we will pretty soon,” Paul replied with a frustrated sigh.
Another employee, who claims to run Ted’s department, says he's never seen him before in his life. The head scientist asks two other employees to scan his implant, only for them to find out that he doesn't have one, alarming her.
“Implants?” Hannah asked.
“Are humans gonna be chipped in the future?” added Peter.
“That'd be a little creepy,” said Miss Holloway.
The tape then cuts away to a location underneath CCRP HQ. A Code Black alarm blares on a holographic screen that looks similar to the ones that the employees were using. A cyborg stares at it for a moment, before clutching a strange locket in his hands and leaving.
“Woah, speaking of creepy!” said Stephanie.
“Didn't realize that the Terminator would be working with us in the future,” said Bill.
“Yeah, someone keep him and Tinky away from each other,” Paul added.
The cyborg makes his way to Ted’s holding room. A scientist approaches him (referring to him as “Executive Kilgore”) and tells him that Ted's DNA matches that of an employee that disappeared 85 years prior, following an experiment that CCRP was conducting in time manipulation.
“85 years…wait, didn't Ted make a crack about being there for 85 years before he fell asleep?” Lex realized.
“Oh, yeah!” Miss Holloway said. “That must be how he did it! He thought about going to a particular time just before falling asleep, and activated Tinky’s powers somehow!”
Stephanie turned to Peter. “Kinda reminds me of that short story we read in class, ‘Rip Van Winkle!’”
“Yeah, it does!” Peter agreed. “Only with more cyborg creeps and terrifying Eldritch gods.”
“It makes sense that CCRP would assume it was caused by their experiment, too,” Bill remarked. “It's not always easy to tell when a Lord in Black gets itself involved. Believe me, I know.”
Kilgore instructs the scientist not to run any additional tests on Ted, wanting to speak to him himself. The tape moves inside of the holding room, where Ted is being watched over by a security guard. He takes a sip out of a nearby cup and spits it out.
Ted: “Hey, this coffee tastes like shit!”
Security Guard: “What's coffee?”
“Ah, your standard interaction between us and the customers at work!” Emma remarked with a giggle.
Kilgore then enters the room, causing the guard to leave. He introduces himself by his full name and title: Executive Andrew Kilgore, Manager in Chief of CCRP’s Western Hemisphere Sector 19. He calls himself the judge, jury, and executioner of the company.
“Oh, Ted is screwed!” Paul remarked, rubbing the goosebumps on his arm.
“Maybe not,” Peter argued. “This is just an interrogation. He could get out of this, as long as he stays chill!”
Ted: “Okay, it’s not illegal to be hung over at work, pal! And I haven't read the Constitution in a while, but I’m pretty sure it's the right of every American citizen to wack off in their office while the door is closed!”
“Not that chill!” Peter shouted at the screen before facepalming. Could this guy show a semblance of self-preservation for one fucking minute?!
“Now I feel less embarrassed about our interrogation with Shapiro,” Stephanie remarked, causing a small smile and shaky laugh from her boyfriend.
Kilgore tells Ted that there aren't any nations anymore, and that they've all been replaced by corporations.
“Oh, that's…concerning…” said Miss Holloway.
“Understatement of the century,” Ruth added.
“No wonder the android me went back. I wouldn't wanna stay in a dystopian…” Emma trailed off before turning to Paul. “What year is this?”
“Not sure,” Paul replied. “She told me that she's from 2104, but I figured that was the year she went back, not the year she was created.”
Kilgore asks Ted if he knows the year. Ted says that it's 2019, but Kilgore corrects him and says it's 2104.
“Okay, never mind,” Paul said matter-of-factly, sheepishly biting his lip.
Kilgore: “85 years from the time you call home! Here, you are a homeless man, Mr. Spankoffski!”
“That’s a weirdly coincidental thing to say, considering there's an actual homeless man involved with this,” Ruth remarked.
Bill raised an eyebrow and turned to Paul. “You think he's from 2104, too?”
“That would explain how he knew Emma,” Paul replied. “Maybe he's one of the scientists who developed her, or one of the employees we saw before at the meeting!”
Kilgore says that Ted belongs to him and tries to choke him out. Ted begs for his life, and Kilgore quickly realizes that he doesn't know who he is, meaning that “it hasn't happened yet.”
“I wonder if he's gotten the feeling that maybe he might be in trouble yet,” Emma remarked.
Stephanie raised an eyebrow. “He said that something ‘hasn’t happened yet.’ What's he talking about?”
“Does it matter?” asked Peter.
“Hey, I was curi–”
She cut herself off as she realized how shaky his voice sounded, and how quickly his chest was moving up and down.
Her expression softened, and she took his hand and held it tightly. He smiled gratefully at her.
Kilgore releases Ted from his grip and explains that, in the year that Ted is from, CCRP was attempting to unlock Tinky's powers for their own gain.
Kilgore: “T’Noy Karaxis. The Bastard of Time and Space. The Weaver of Impossibilities. A Lord in Black.”
“Wait, they know who Tinky is?!” Bill shouted.
“Wait, they know who the Lords in Black are, generally?!” added Paul.
“God damn it!” Miss Holloway said, rubbing her palm on her forehead. “What could they have possibly gotten out of such an experiment?!”
“I don't know!” said Paul. “It's CCRP, Just…”
“If you say ‘Just Go With It,’ I will use my powers to make you punch yourself,” Miss Holloway cut him off.
Paul quickly shut up. Lex chimed in: “So, the experiment worked, then?”
“Possibly,” Miss Holloway said, with a breath to try to calm herself. “According to the book, Tinky behaves like a wild predator. It picks its target early and chases after them. There's a chance that it may have gone after Ted regardless, although the CCRP experiment would give it a solid cover if that were the case.”
“So, we’ll never know for sure,” Paul sighed. “Cool. Not unsettling at all.”
Kilgore further explains that the experiment had been assumed a failure, but that Ted had been “touched” by Tinky somehow.
Kilgore: “You have been aborted from the flow of time! You have become the Time Bastard!”
“Wait, that's, like, two steps away from Tinky's title,” Stephanie realized. “Won’t that make things confusing?”
“Yeah, but this half of the tape’s already confusing,” Paul argued.
Kilgore tries to rip into Ted’s genes – to “discover his secret” – but Ted tosses a nearby chair at him before he can.
“Yeah! That's it!” Peter shouted, letting go of his girlfriend's hand so he could clap.
Stephanie smiled at him. “Your guy’s got quite the arm!”
There other guards make their way in, but Ted fights them off as well, before escaping. Kilgore sounds off an intruder alarm, causing nearly fifty CCRP workers to enter the fight as Ted runs for his life.
Throughout most of the fight scene, Peter had his eyes glued to the screen, and began shouting at it as if he were one of the hardcore Nighthawk fans in the crowd at the homecoming game.
“Don’t stop now, dude! Do something!...Nice! Okay, now run!...No, no, don't run! Duck it! Duck...Yeah, like that! Keep going! You’ve got it! Come on!”
“Hey, bud, this is not real-time footage,” Ruth reminded him.
Peter knew that, of course. Cheering was just how he dealt with his growing nerves. Though he supposed he got a little carried away there.
Stephanie must’ve noticed his sheepish expression, because she added: “I think it's cute!”
And then he was blushing for a different reason.
Ted bumps into a guard who tries to disintegrate him, but Kilgore makes him drop his weapon, wanting to preserve his genes. He reaches out his spinning metal arm and nearly succeeds in killing Ted, but then Ted grabs the weapon that the guard dropped and uses it on Kilgore. A red dot appears on Kilgore’s chest, before he slowly starts to disintegrate.
“Yes!” Peter pumped his fist and sighed with relief. This half of the tape was not being kind to his heart rate.
“Never would’ve thought him able to kill a vengeful cyborg who can literally tear him apart, but here we are!” Paul said, with a genuinely impressed tone of voice.
“Well, adrenaline and the sheer desire to live are powerful things,” Bill added with a chuckle. He knew that from experience.
Ted happily pockets the disintegrator and races to his office. He pieces together that he has to focus on a time in order to go there.
Ted: “Okay. Here we go. 2019. 2019. Back to my life. Back to my wonderful…lonely…miserable…life…”
Miss Holloway cocked an eyebrow. “Okay, what's he doing?”
“Something Ted-like, probably,” Bill said with a sigh.
That twinge of newfound respect he got for Ted after the fight with Kilgore had lasted for about one minute.
Ted remembers the vision of his and Jenny's wedding, and concludes that it must've happened in an alternate timeline. He then makes a plan to go back in time to 2004 and set things right.
“Alright! Looks like you may get a sister-in-law after all, Pete!” Ruth said, smiling over at her friend.
“Yeah. Either that, or he’s about to break his universe,” Peter added with a quiet chuckle.
He tried to mask it as a joke, but considering that alternate timelines had clearly existed well before Ted’s interference, and that Paul had described him as missing weeks after the fact, he saw it as a very real possibility.
Ted falls asleep thinking about October 17th, 2004. When he wakes him, he finds that he’s in the headquarters of the defunct Hatchetfield Gazette newspaper – which, in 2004, was located where CCRP currently is.
Ted: “Yes! I did it! I am the Time Bastard!”
“He realizes Kilgore likely meant that as an insult, right?” Lex asked.
The tape then cuts to a younger Ted, who is getting ready to go confess to Jenny.
Young Ted: “Don’t be a baby, Spankoffski! You’re not a teddy bear! You're a lion!”
“Woah!” said Stephanie. “‘04 Ted sounds exactly like 2020 Peter!”
Peter turned to her. “Really?”
“Absolutely!” Ruth agreed. “Right down to that voice crack you’ve got! It's actually a little weird.”
“Not really,” Emma argued. “Same thing happened with me. After my Brigadoon show, my parents showed me an old video they had of Jane’s freshman choir. It was like listening to my own voice!”
“Yeah,” Hannah agreed. “Us, too! Mom has called me ‘Lexie’ before!”
Lex sighed. “I’m sorry on her behalf.”
The older version of Ted then shows up and laces his younger self with an ether-soaked cloth, knocking him out.
Stephanie facepalmed herself. “He can't confess if he's unconscious, genius!”
“...Unless his plan is to meet up with Jenny as his current-day self,” Paul realized.
Miss Holloway stared at him incredulously. “You mean, this almost-middle-aged man is about to go confess his love to a college-age girl who may or may not even recognize him or believe his time travel story?”
“Yep. That's a Ted plan, alright.” Bill sighed.
“Oh, this guy’s about to get maced,” Lex added.
The tape cuts to a young man walking down the street with flowers and a black box in his hand, getting ready to take Jenny to Clivesdale. Suddenly, Ted catches up to him, whacks him across the face with a crowbar, steals his flowers, and tosses the locket inside of the box to the side. He then tells him to remember the face of the Time Bastard.
Peter buried his face in his hands, stifling a scream of frustration behind a loud groan.
“Why would you – why? Why?!” said Emma.
“That man did nothing to you!” Bill added.
The tape cuts again, showing Jenny writing her letter for Ted. The camera angle changes so that the group can see the words she writes as she writes them.
Jenny: “Teddy, Andy’s asked me to move in with him. I’ve said yes. Not because I wanna go to Clivesdale. Fuck Clivesdale!”
“I like her already,” Stephanie said with a chuckle.
Peter took a deep breath and smiled at her. “Me, too! Fuck Clivesdale!”
“Fuck Clivesdale!” said Bill.
“Fuck Clive…” Paul started, before a striking realization overcame him. “...oh, holy shit!”
Emma turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “What's wrong, Paul?”
“The guy that Ted beat up was named Andy,” Paul explained. “And…wasn't Kilgore's first name Andrew?”
Emma's eyes widened. “Wait, you're right! And, when he got that alarm, he was staring at a locket that looked just like the one Ted tossed aside!”
Peter tossed his head back. “Jesus Christ! Ted created the cyborg that almost killed him!”
“This is kinda like in Star Trek, when that engineer accidentally gave that formula to the scientist who invented the thing they needed!” Ruth remarked, before adding: “Except this case is a lot more violent than that case.”
Jenny writes that seeing Ted every day knowing he doesn't love her back was too painful. She tells him that he was the best friend she's ever had and that she’ll always love him. She then delivers the letter to the 2004 version of him, before the 2019 version of him races up to her.
“And let the trainwreck commence,” Bill muttered to himself.
“Jenny just wrote the sweetest letter ever. Time to see how quickly Ted kills the moment,” Lex added.
Jenny tries to repeat what she said in the letter, but Ted interrupts her with his modern-day crass flirting. She's immediately confused by his behavior, and when he explains that he was acting like the pushy asshole he thought she’d be attracted to, she's horrified. She then tries to leave, but Ted grabs her wrist.
Ted: “No! I lost you once! I’m never gonna let you go again!”
“No, don't grab a girl’s wrist! What are you doing?!” Emma shouted.
“I thought even you'd know better than that!” Peter added.
Stephanie turned to the side to face Peter. “Thank you for not taking girl advice from him.”
As Jenny fights her way out of Ted’s grip, she bumps her arm into his shirt pocket. Both of their eyes go wide with terror as he finally lets her go, and she steps back to reveal a glowing red dot on her chest.
The group went silent, as the meaning of that red dot settled onto them.
“The weapon…” Hannah said, all in one breath.
“That's the same dot that appeared on Kilgore when he…” Bill added, cutting himself off and putting a knuckle over his mouth.
“Oh, shit!” Paul yelled.
The group’s breaths collectively hitched.
All of them expected a disaster, but none of them expected a fatal one.
In a fit of grief, Ted throws the disintegrator aside. As Jenny's legs fade away, she falls into Ted's arms.
Jenny: “Teddy…it hurts…”
Ted: “No, no, no, please, God, no, no, no…”
The rest of Jenny's body crumbles, leaving her as nothing more than a pile of ashes.
“Oh my God! Poor Jenny!” Ruth shouted.
“Fading out of existence…what a horrible way to go…” Miss Holloway agreed.
“Plus, she didn't even know anything about what was happening,” Bill added. “One second, she was getting ready to move. Next, her crush was acting like a different person. And then she died!”
“Oh dear God! Ted got his crush killed!” Stephanie said in a low register, as if the weight of that statement had just hit her. She quickly wiped tears away from her eyes.
“I know…oh my God, I’m empathizing with Ted Fucking Spankoffski!” Emma realized.
“Right?!” Lex agreed. “It's weird, but…I know exactly how he feels…”
“Me, too,” Emma said, causing Paul to bite his lip.
Stephanie glanced over at her boyfriend and put her arm around his shoulders to keep her mind from wandering back to the gym.
Peter turned to his side and wrapped his arm around her stomach in return. He wanted to run up to Ted on that sidewalk and hug him, but he knew he couldn't, so he was going to hug Stephanie instead.
Ted races back to the time machine and makes a plan to go back an additional four hours.
Ted: “I’m gonna meet myself here, kick my own ass, and stop myself from fucking it up with Jenny! Yeah, y-y-y-yeah! Okay, this is easy! I'm good at this!”
“You’re clearly not!” Bill yelled at the screen.
“Once again, I ask that you please don't break your timeline,” said Peter.
“I would like to second that request,” Paul added.
Ted is woken up by the mild-mannered man who owned the office in 2004.
Mild-Mannered Man: “Excuse me? What are you doing in my office? Again?!”
Peter shot up, alarmed. “Again?!”
“What does he mean ‘again?’” Lex asked.
“Did he do it right?” Miss Holloway wondered.
“Maybe he went forward four hours, instead of back, like he meant to?” Stephanie suggested.
As Ted freaks out and questions why his time travel didn't work this time, Tinky appears to him again and tells him that CCRP’s time manipulation experiment wouldn't happen for another fifteen years – and, thus, the office has no access to his powers.
Paul's eyes widened with terror. “Holy shit! That's why he's been MIA! He can't leave 2004!”
Emma’s jaw dropped. “This is a fucking ‘Now I’ve Got You’ game!”
Paul turned to her, confused. “...What?”
Emma turned to face him, as well. “I’ve been taking this class on communication because I needed an extra credit for my major. And we had this unit about ‘games’ that people play to deal with conflict. One of those was called ‘Now I’ve Got You,’ which is when one person intentionally sets up another to fail so they can get on their ass about it! Like, when a manager asks someone who sucks at details to give a report so they can blast them for missing shit. Or, in this case, when an Eldritch god gives someone reckless and impulsive a supernatural power, knowing he’d fuck himself over with it!”
“He wanted Ted to go back in time,” Peter added, quickly catching on to what Emma was saying. “This was a part of his plan all along!”
Ted freaks out even more, terrified at the prospect of being stuck in the past. Tinky then tells him that the place where he's actually stuck is in the Bastard's Box, before handing it to him. Still horrified, but now also morbidly curious, Ted opens the Box and gazes inside. He then screams and drops it, stumbling back with his hands on his head.
“No, don't look inside!” Miss Holloway yelled. “Oh, shit, shit!”
Not that Peter wasn't already freaking out, but seeing the witch freak out certainly wasn't helping things. “What? What happened?! Why did he scream?!”
“That box…the Bastard's Box…that's where Tinky keeps the souls of all of its past victims,” Miss Holloway explained. “And because of the time travel thing, all of its future victims, too. The book doesn't give many details, but it describes it as a ‘twisted maze of impossible turmoil.’ If Ted looked inside…”
She cut herself off, afraid that, if she kept going, she would only make Peter's anxiety worse. But he already knew that the end of her sentence couldn't have been good.
Not realizing what's happening, a Gazette guard kicks him out. Ted wraps his arms around himself and starts shivering.
Ted: “Don't leave me out here! It's cold out here! It's so cold!”
Peter's stomach fell as fast as a bungee jumper. “That's not his voice! I know my brother's voice! That's not it!”
“You’re right!” Bill realized. “It's too thick. Too quiet. Too…broken…”
“Shit,” Miss Holloway said again. “How much damage did that box do?!”
Ted then finds an old light gray coat and black beanie sitting on top of a pile of trash. He slips them on and resolves to find himself a new home in 2004.
“Oh…oh…!” said Paul. He briefly put his hand over his mouth in shock, before adding: “I’ve seen someone wearing that exact coat and beanie before! We all have!”
Emma gasped. “Oh my God! You're right! Wait, does that mean that Ted is…?!”
“But how?!” Hannah wondered, just as taken aback. “Different timelines! Doesn't always go back!”
“Ted’s been jumping around time the entire tape, Banana. He must’ve…confused time somehow. Done so much damage that this broken persona of his got split across the timelines!” Lex tried to explain, forcefully steadying out their own voice. She prayed to God that she was making sense.
Stephanie put her hand on her head. “None of the times where we saw him were before 2004…I mean, I know I would've been really young, but…”
“No, no, you're right! I don't remember him popping up before then, either!” Bill agreed, throwing himself back in his chair. “Shit, Ted…!”
Miss Holloway tossed her hands up. “I knew Tinky was a bastard, but this is next-level!”
“I can't believe this! I-I cannot believe this!” Ruth stammered out.
While most of the group was shouting like this, though, there was one person whose brain was short-circuiting too badly to get a word out. Instead, he merely stared at the screen – jaw open, sweat beating down his forehead, heart moving at a speed he hadn't felt since the events of his own tape.
He didn't think it was possible. It couldn't be. CCRP was downtown. So was his father's shoe store. So was the coffee shop where he got his hot chocolate every morning. After fifteen years – sixteen in his timeline – shouldn't someone in his family have recognized him?
No. It didn't make any sense.
It made perfect sense.
That's how the homeless guy knew Emma – tangentially, through Paul – plus, he’d seen her android counterpart in 2104!
That's why Tinky was eyeing Peter in the gym, and why he was so fascinated by him just now. The idea of his little plaything having a family must’ve thrown it through a loop. And that's what its threat meant, too – it wanted to break Peter the same way it broke Ted!
And…oh…when Paul asked Tinky if he went after the homeless guy, he said, “In a sense.” Because it was a technicality – he didn't go after him, he created him!
It was Ted…the whole time…
But…but…but that would've meant that he’d been spending close to two decades living on the streets…alone…likely dealing with Tinky's harassment…and that couldn't be true, could it?! No, it couldn't be, it couldn't be…
The Waylon Place. Richie. He said Peter looked like the homeless guy in the ghost outfit. And when watching it back, Ruth and Stephanie agreed. Hannah even said that it reminded her of her and her sister…of course it did! It's so common for siblings to look alike!
Oh. Oh shit. And that song! The creepy-ass song that Tinky was singing as it rewound the tape…it was about this! It had that line, “The bastard has time to fall…” that must’ve alluded to Ted living in destitution for years! “You sneak around, you think there’s only one of you” must’ve been about how clueless he was, and “Thought I wanted to erase your every move” must've been about how Tinky, figuratively and literally, stole his future from him…
No…no no no no no…
It had to be true…but…but it couldn't be…Peter had been taught not to approach the homeless guy. He’d been so intimidated by him – scared, even! But…but he couldn't be scared of Ted! Annoyed, sure, but not scared! Never scared!
No…he couldn't be…he couldn't be…he was…he was…
Ted was the homeless guy from downtown…
“Peter!”
He was quickly shook out of his thoughts by a hand clutching at his arm. “Wha–?”
He looked up to see Stephanie turned to face him, concern etched in her eyes. “You alright? You kinda spaced out on us for a minute there…”
“It's…” Peter gulped, a lump caught in his throat. “He’s…he’s my brother…”
“I know, babe…I’m so sorry…” Stephanie replied with a soft tone of voice, before deciding to return a kindness that her boyfriend had shown her when their tape played her father's death back. “Do you wanna bury your head under my arm?”
Peter nodded, and Stephanie lifted up her arm to allow his head through.
The tape cuts to a yellow screen with the words “FIFTEEN YEARS LATER” written in black text. Then, the screen shows a now-elderly Ted on the streets begging for change. Suddenly, he runs into Paul and Emma. He asks them for change, and they tell him they don't have any and start to rush off. Then, a glint of recognition appears on Ted’s face.
Ted: “...Paul?”
“What?!” Paul shouted, before his brain even had the chance to catch up with his mouth.
Emma turned to face him. “Has he ever recognized you before?”
“No! Never!” Paul replied. “After fifteen years, why now?!”
“You know, I don't think he's ever recognized me, either,” Bill realized.
Stephanie narrowed her eyes and turned towards Peter. Already knowing what she was going to ask, he lifted his head slightly and shook it.
Ted then recognizes Emma as “that fucking robot they were gonna make,” and resolves to find Paul again and warn him.
“Oh, it's worse than I thought!” Miss Holloway realized. “When Ted looked into the Box and had his personality shifted, he must've had his memories scrambled up, too!”
“So, up until now, he just straight-up didn't remember me?” Paul asked.
“Even now, he probably believes he's seeing you again for the first time,” Miss Holloway clarified. “And who knows if he’d recognize you again?”
“That explains his reaction to me, too!” said Emma. “He didn't actually know for sure that I was the android! But when he saw me, that was the memory that came back to him – not anything involving me as ‘his coworker’s wife’ or ‘the crabby barista who won't sing!’ He could've just as easily mistaken me for the android in my timeline!”
The tape cuts back to Paul and Emma's wedding, where the same scene of the homeless man interrupting and declaring Emma to be an imposter plays a second time.
Seeing the events of the wedding play out a second time, now with the extra knowledge that Paul had, made him begin to – in the words of the version of himself from Emma's timeline – think about the implications.
If the guy that interrupted the wedding and almost blew Emma's cover was Ted…didn't that mean…?
“Oh no…” Paul said, putting his hand over his mouth again.
Peter seemed to catch on, too. He, slowly and shakily, lifted his head out of his girlfriend's arm and stared Paul down, a look of pure terror in his eyes. “Did you…did you…?!”
“I – I didn't know! I…”
“On the bridge. Emma said that you were gonna have to…” Peter cut himself off, as if speaking the words was physically painful for him. “Is…is this tape gonna show…?”
Paul hesitated, but then slowly nodded. “Probably…I’m sorry…”
Peter didn't say anything else in response. He just took a heavy breath and buried his head back where it was.
The tape then cuts to a yellow screen with the words “ONE WEEK LATER” written in black text. The next scene shows Ted sitting in an alley and sipping on a bottle of whiskey.
Ted: “Eh, fuck Paul!”
Paul shakily nodded. “Okay. I earned that. Well, I’m about to earn that, I should say.”
Suddenly, in a flash of yellow light, Tinky appears in front of Ted and tells him that he’ll be in the Bastard's Box soon. He then laughs as Ted cries and holds his head, before disappearing as quickly as he came. Then, Emma and Paul appear, towering over him, knives in their hands.
Emma: “You almost ruined our wedding, you bastard!”
“...Is that word officially ruined for anyone else?” Emma asked the rest of the group, to which she got a chorus of nods in response.
Emma then stabs Ted several times in his back and side, before Paul lands the finishing blow in his chest.
Bill, Lex, Hannah, Miss Holloway, and Ruth all gasped.
Stephanie moved her free hand over her mouth. On the other side of her, she felt a hand gripping at her dress for dear life.
Emma turned to Paul. “Did we have to hit him that many times?”
“We're very careful people,” was the only response Paul could muster.
The tape then cuts to Ted – now out of his coat and beanie – rising to his feet, a look of confusion and terror on his face. He’s landed in a completely empty and yellow room, accented only by a singular hallway.
“This must be the…” Miss Holloway trailed off, but everyone knew what the end of that sentence was.
“Okay, okay…” Paul said to himself, before putting both of his hands over his mouth.
It wasn't just that he killed a guy who was already going through Hell. He actively helped the entity that was doing that to him.
The tape finally cuts to a yellow screen with the word “END” written in black text.
Stephanie turned towards Peter. “It's over, babe.”
Peter slowly lifted his head to see the end card on the screen. He then nodded, adjusted his glasses, and shifted his seating position – though Stephanie noticed that he still looked visibly distressed.
It took several beats before anyone spoke again. The weight of everything they'd just seen was sitting heavily with them, and nobody knew how to approach it.
Finally, Miss Holloway spoke up: “Tinky is one cruel and callous piece of shit…”
“You said it,” Bill agreed with a sigh. “Y’all know how I feel about Ted, but he still never deserved any of that! I wouldn't wish that shit on anybody!”
Emma then realized something else: “The guy got put into Pokey’s hive in my timeline…was his mind split between the two Lords? Because I don't even want to think about how that would work!”
Hannah nodded. “Wiggly, too.”
“Oh, that's right!” Lex had completely forgotten that the homeless guy was in the doll cult in their timeline. “Shit…yeah, I can see how he got turned. He's clearly got some holes in his life…”
“Imagine walking past someone every day and having no idea what they were going through,” Ruth added.
The group fell into silence once more for a while after that. The next person to speak up was Peter – who sounded like he was about to cry: “He exists in every timeline…”
“Like Lex said, time travelling in a world that already has multiple timelines probably fucked with things a bit,” Stephanie replied solemnly.
“So…so he exists in our timeline, too?”
“Yeah…I guess, yeah…” If she was being honest, she hadn't even fully considered that until he pointed it out.
Of course, seeing your brother get his mind broken was gonna be hard on its own. But seeing your brother get his mind broken and then become a person you can't recognize?
The more Peter thought about it, the more he felt his limbs start to shake.
Ted moved back in with his family right after he graduated college. Peter would've been a toddler then. He’d grown up with this guy, and now…
Paul’s words from before echoed in Peter's brain: “It's the head that makes us who we are, not the body.”
Did that apply here, too? Did Tinky break Ted so badly that he’s not even him anymore? Or could Peter find some sign of his normal, pain-in-the-ass big brother buried deep inside of him, now that he was looking?
Peter gripped onto the bean bag chair to try to steady himself. As he did so, Stephanie noticed his chest rising and falling at a rapid fire pace.
“Spankoffski? You alright?”
Peter didn't verbally respond, only shaking his head.
It was then that Ruth rose from her seat and approached them. “Hey, bud? What's wrong?”
“I think…I think I’m…having a panic attack…”
Stephanie and Ruth stared at each other, both trying their best to stifle their growing concern out of fear of making things worse.
Luckily, though, there was someone in the group who had experience with treating panic attacks, and he quickly rose from his seat and approached the others.
“It's not good to crowd around him,” Bill whispered to the girls, who each took a giant step back in response.
He then turned his attention to Peter and spoke with a gentle tone. “Hey, kid. It's okay. We're gonna take five, okay? Let's step out for a minute and give you a chance to breathe. And you can hold onto me if you’d like.”
Peter nodded, gratefully taking hold of Bill’s arms as he helped him out of the bean bag chair.
“That's it,” Bill said. “Steady now.”
“Need anyone else to come?” Ruth asked.
Bill thought for a moment, before replying: “I don't want too many people there. I don't want to overwhelm him…but having someone from his timeline there could be helpful.”
Stephanie nodded. In truth, she knew jack shit about panic attacks, but she trusted Bill’s judgement.
The three of them began moving away from the rest of the group. Paul watched them leave with a sickening feeling in his stomach.
Killing the homeless guy was easy back when he thought of him as a random guy on the streets who knew Emma's secret. And a part of him was thinking that this new information didn't change anything. He was still a threat to Emma. He still needed to die to keep her safe.
But at the same time, after everything he’d seen from the Lords in Black, the thought of helping one of them made him feel physically sick. Plus, Ted – normal, non-homeless Ted, that is – had never been Paul's enemy. They weren't as close as Ted thought they were, but that didn't mean he wanted to hurt him.
And seeing how it all affected Peter…was protecting his own family really worth destroying another one?
Paul sat back on the couch and sighed, fidgeting with his fingers. “Okay…okay…okay…okay…okay…”
“Paul?” Emma interrupted him, speaking solemnly. “Do you need a minute, too?”