Night. An empty gravel carpark in a crime-prone industrial precinct. A breeze kicks the litter around, picks up a damp front page of a discarded newspaper and throws it against a chain-link fence. The headline: The Information Super Highway — Fad or Future?

Date: October 8, 1997.

A blast of blinding white brightness and the crackle, shriek, and buzz of electricity. The cold and quiet night returns. There is a red-edged circular gap in the fence that wasn’t there a moment ago. Squatting in a small, smoldering crater, is a naked man.

His skin steams and his muscular form heaves under heavy, steady breaths. The time-traveler stumbles from his time-push dismount crater and falls onto the gravel. He made it. It damn near killed him, but those crazy big-brained bastards did it.

* * *

A few hours had passed. The Time-Traveler had gathered up some clothes from kind strangers and charity bins. Khakis, a Pinky and the Brain T-shirt, a pair of miss-matched new balance sneakers, and a small denim jacket with Tweety Bird of Looney Tunes fame on the back.

Right. He wasn’t going to die of exposure, he was fairly inconspicuous, and he’d managed to get a bit of water and something called a cliff bar. Now all that was left was the mission: prevent the rise of superheroes and thus save the future from the inevitably world destroying escalation of super villains.

It was about now that the first Secret Heroes popped up and— “Crap,” Thought Captain Wonder Soldier “It’s me. I’m the first one and it snowballs from here.”

He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small credit card size wad of plastic. A Data Biscuit, something he had brought with him when he Time-Shifted through rather...personal means of storage.

The Hero bent the card and it snapped and revealed itabcontents. Within was a sheet of paper with classified info to be accessed once he was in the past and working on the mission.

“No. It’s not you.” Read the first line.

“Oh. Good!” Said Captain Wonder Soldier.

“However,” It continued.

“Nothing good comes after however.”

“You inadvertently inspired the first heroes by stopping that bus from hitting that guy.”

“Huh?”

A bus whizzed by and the hero heard a wet thud. The bus powered on.

“Anyways, we accounted for that this time with the card you brought with you in your mouth. From this point on? Just live your life and don’t use your powers. (Also we gave you a laser vasectomy during the physical, can’t go letting you have super babies). Be sure to write a report and leave it at the designated drop point. Hopefully this version solved the problem. Catch ya! Love, Brainicles.”

The now retired, apparently sterile hero lowered his mission card.

“Damn it! In my mouth? Should have thought of that.”