Doctor Tomorrow

The life of a hero… six decades in the making!
It all began shortly after the United States entry into World War II. Like all patriotic young men, Bart Simms wished to enlist in the armed forced and defend his country. Bart’s father, millionaire industrialist Russell Simms, refused to allow it, pulling strings to guarantee that Bart would not serve. The eldest of his two sons, Lewis, had died at Pearl Harbor, and Simms felt one son was more than enough to give to his country.
However, fate had its own plans for Bart.
Not long after, an employee and family friend, Chester “Cappy” Thorton, discovered a cache of equipment hidden in the factory where he worked. Unable to decipher the complex electronic devices alone, Cappy turned to Bart, an accomplished engineer in his own right. Together they got the machine up and running… and unwittingly opened an electronic Pandora’s Box.
The machine was a fully loaded, state-of-the-art computer manufactured by Angel computers in 1998! Although the hardware held the potential to disrupt the intended flow of history, it was the software that proved to be the most dangerous. Included in the secret cache Cappy found, were scored of CD’s and DVD’s, a veritable archive of historical and scientific data from the next six decades, including the engineering schematics for devices, vehicles, and weaponry not even dreamt of in Bart’s time. Seeing this as his opportunity to enter the war, Bart employed the future technology and knowledge of coming events to aide the Allies cause as Doctor Tomorrow, a self-proclaimed time traveler who had journeyed to the past to ensure history stayed its course.
To manage the tools Providence had given him, Bart used the “prime directive” never to look too far into future events. In this way, Bart hoped to make a difference without changing the future. Yet, was the path he had taken too easy to stray from… and was his ultimate destination failure?
==The Glory War 1942 – 1945==
===Age of Tomorrow===
While at the movies with Imogene, Cappy watched a newsreel footage of the war that made him think of his son Danny, a seaman aboard the U.S.S. Leedstown. Returning to Simms– Forestall Aviation after dropping Imogene home, Cappy went down to the workshop dubbed the World of Tomorrow where he and Bart kept the Angel computer to use it to learn if Danny was going to be okay. Unable to access the computer without Bart’s entry codes, Cappy was frustrated, when then Bart walked up from behind and startled him. Moved by Cappy’s heartfelt plea to let him know what was going to happen to his son, Bart reluctantly agreed to open the files and find out despite going against his prime directive to not alter events in the past.
Telling Cappy to turn his back so he would not look at the screen, Bart found the file he was looking for and learned that Danny would be killed when his ship was sunk during Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of Nazi–occupied North Africa. Lacking the heart to tell Cappy about his son’s impending death and the courage to alter the course of written history, Bart lied and said that he did not find anything. Relieved, Cappy went back to work while Bart stayed behind and deleted the file.
Finding himself in the horns of a dilemma, Bart returned to the family estate in Huntington, where he walked into his brother Lewis’ bedroom and wondered if he would have used Doctor Tomorrow’s knowledge to save him despite the risk of loosing the knowledge as a result of that act. That night during dinner with his father and Doris Martin, Lewis’ fiancée, a debate about Doctor Tomorrow led Bart to ask Russell if he would use Doctor Tomorrow’s knowledge of the future to save Lewis despite the risk of altering their intended history. When Russell said that he would save Lewis and be content to continue living in whatever alternate timeline the act would create, Bart realized that the risk of changing history was worth the reward.
Two hours later, Doctor Tomorrow flew across the Atlantic to rendezvous with the fleet. After learning the whereabouts of the Leedstown from Andrew Cunningham, the commander of the allied fleet, Bart took position over the ship to guard it against enemy action. Unfortunately, Bart had to engage enemy fighters when they threatened a group of seaplanes that history said would survive the attack. Bart suddenly realized that he had not violated history for he was supposed to take part in the battle all along. Pulled out of position, Bart could not recover in time to save the Leedstown and the ship sunk, as history said it would.
Returning home, Bart confessed his concealment of the truth to Cappy and how he tried to save his son. Though the explanation did not make it any easier when Cappy received a letter detailing how Danny died a hero, he eventually forgave Bart, who learned that victors wrote history, not its victims.
===Black Water===
As 1942 drew to a close, Bart stared at the Angel computer with his finger poised on the key that would open the door to 1943’s secrets, when then Albert Einstein entered the room and startled him. Revealing that he knew everything about him, Einstein showed Bart a secret message between FDR and Allied Intelligence that detailed Hitler’s recall of the Nazi’s atomic project to German soil. As he left, Einstein said that there was no guarantee that the Allies would discover the convoy’s coordinates, while Bart, on the other hand, could.
Requiring more information if he was to succeeded in stopping the Nazi bomb, Bart bugged Russell’s phone to get what he needed. That night, while listening in on a conversation between Russell and Jim Forestall, Bart learned the date of the Nazi convoy’s departure to Germany. Traveling to Turkey, Doctor Tomorrow forced Cicero, the infamous Nazi spy, to tell him the timetable and coordinates of the Nazi heavy water relocation task force. On his way back home, Bart conveyed his findings to Allied Intelligence in the hope that they would use it to sink the Nazi ship carrying the atomic materials as the history files recorded.
Landing on Admiral Cunningham’s ship to refuel the Omen, Bart learned that due to a faulty timer the infiltrators assigned to destroy the Nazi ship had died. Armed with the coordinates of the German convoy, Bart took it upon himself to stop it. Boarding a submersible mini–sub, Bart left to rendezvous with the German convoy, aware that he was destined to do so and that fate had taken him there in the first place.
Boarding the Nazi flagship after he magnetically attached his sub to the hull , Bart followed a Geiger counter to the radioactive materials, when then he discovered that the sub’s magnets had disrupted the ship’s compass and alerted the Nazis to his presence. Surprised by a stormtrooper, Bart used a remote control in his gauntlet to activate his machine gun’s firing mechanism, which while it saved him gave away his location. Caught in a firefight, Bart used riot gas to cover his escape after he set a pack of C–4 where it would do the most damage.
As Bart crawled through a duct to escape, two metal hands that rose up from beneath him grabbed his head and tossed him into the ship’s deck. Kicked by a metal boot, Bart slid across the deck. Fighting off unconsciousness as he slowly tried to get to his feet, Bart got his first look at an alien nightmare that made the atomic bomb puny by comparison, the Third Reich’s ultimate weapon, the Teutonic Knight.
===Knight of Vengeance===
Recalling how in 1941 he found Cappy inside a subbasement where he had come across a capsule from the future covered with powdery green ash, Bart remembered how he through that nothing on Earth could surpass the technology they discovered inside it, a notion challenged by the sight of the Tectonic Knight. Shooting a grenade into the munitions that the crew had stockpiled on deck, Bart hoped that be enough to toast the Knight, but to his surprise he still stood before him. After futility shooting the Teutonic Knight with an M–25, Bart exercised the better part of valor and jumped ship, but he did not get far as the Knight grabbed his ankle, lifted him high above the night sky, and then dropped him into the ocean, where he blacked out.
Awakening in the brig, Bart found Werner Heisenberg standing watch over him. A member of a group of German insiders who projected that the Nazis would fall within the next two years, Werner informed Bart that Hitler had canceled the atomic research project after he informed him that it would take that long to deliver the bomb prototype, and that the ship was carrying the prototype for a fission reactor. Just then, the Teutonic Knight and Guntar Holtz entered the brig to interrogate Bart.
Meanwhile back in the States, Cappy smoothed things over with Dorrie and Russell after Bart missed Lewis’ memorial. Back on the ship, after Guntar stopped the Knight from killing Bart and revealed that they had found the C–4, they left the brig. Moments later, Werner returned with Bart’s belt, which he smuggled out of the lab, and using a piece of plastic explosive Bart broke out of his cell. Asking Werner to create a diversion, Bart returned to his mini–sub and set off its self–destruct mechanism to blow up the ship. Donning a glider pack after the sub exploded, Bart climbed atop the mast and took flight to escape the sinking ship. Pursued by the Teutonic Knight, Bart hid inside the thick, acrid smoke billowing from the crippled ship in the hope that it would diffuse the intensity of the Knight’s concentrated beam weapon. Ultimately, Bart never knew if his plan would have worked, as Guntar called the Knight back to the ship to save the scientists.
Making his way to Admiral Cunningham’s carrier, Bart warned the Admiral that the Germans had a weapon far deadlier than the A–Bomb, and that the President needed to rally a force capable of meeting its threat. Returning to the States a hero, Bart succeeded in winning Doris’ heart and they married in June of 1949.
====Operation Stormbreaker====
Three months after the invasion of Normandy, Sgt. Fireseed discovered that the Nazis were tinkering with uranium in the tiny village of Saint–Eloi, when then the Teutonic Knight discovered him. Chased through the village streets, Sgt. Fireseed was powerless against the Knight’s might, so he took cover inside a mine that unbeknownst to him was from where the Nazis got their uranium from.
A week later in Washington, the US Government recruited Bravado, Nemesis, Warmaster, Jack Rapid, and Doctor Tomorrow to stop the Teutonic Knight and the Nazis from completing the atomic bomb. Meanwhile in Germany, Prestorr, an astronomer who had convinced Hitler that if he created his own star he could alter his astronomical destiny, plotted to use Hitler’s star–seed bomb to blanket the Earth with a cloud of darkness that would block the sway of the stars that had stymied his lust for power so he could rule the world.
Crossing the Atlantic in a bomber specially modified by Doctor Tomorrow, the Stormbreakers shared their origin stories with each other, except for Doctor Tomorrow, who kept the truth of his origin hidden behind the pretense that he was a man from the future sent to the past to ensure that history would run its charted course.
Soon as the Stormbreakers’ aircraft entered French airspace, the Teutonic Knight attacked and damaged its engines. After a short battle, Bravado forced the Knight to retreat, but then the engines exploded. Employing superb flying skills, Dr. Tomorrow managed to land the plane safely. Not long after that, the Stormbreakers met up with Sgt. Fireseed, who garbed in the attire of his family’s calling now went by the name of Turok.
Taking the Stormbreakers to the uranium ore processing plant, Sgt. Turok, who was dying from radiation sickness, ordered them to stay outside while he confronted the Teutonic Knight alone. Entering the plant after giving the light burden to Gilad, Turok confronted the Knight, who was also dying from contamination. After telling the Knight that the Nazis did not tell him that the radiation would poison him so he would do their work, Turok blew up the plant using grenades. Though Turok killed himself the Teutonic Knight survived, and determined to get his revenge on his former masters, traveled to Germany to detonate their bomb. Aware that if the bomb exploded the radioactive fall–out would poison the planet for decades, Dr. Tomorrow ordered Bravado to stop the Knight while the others followed in a Nazi plane.
Following the Teutonic Knight to Germany, Bravado engaged the Nazi in battle, while within the control center Prestorr ordered the launch of the bomb. While Bravado and the Knight followed the missile, the Stormbreakers broke into the building and threatened Prestorr into telling them where the detonation device was. Alas, Prestorr told them that no such thing existed before Nemesis killed him with an arrow to the heart. Though Bravado tried to stop the missile, he was unsuccessful and the bomb exploded in the atmosphere, killing the Teutonic Knight and reverting the armor into its control medallion. After absorbing the atomic energy, Bravado flew high above the Earth’s atmosphere and exploded like a supernova. While the Stormbreakers mourned the deaths of their friends, Jack Rapid recovered the armor’s medallion.
With much hesitation on his part, Doctor Tomorrow and Warmaster turned over the medallion to the U.S. Government, which stored it in a secure warehouse under the designation “X–O.”
==The Cold Warrior 1951 – 1957==
===Tomorrow Ends Today===
It was 1951, and Bart Simms was caught in a dog–fight with a pair of MIG 15s over Kaesong, Korea. Forced to drop his payload in order to evade the MIGs attack, Bart inadvertently wiped out an armistice delegation, thus prolonging the Korean War. This began the end for Bart Simms and Doctor Tomorrow.
A few years later, Bart’s pregnant wife Doris, afraid that atomic bombs, communism, and rock ‘n’ roll threatened the moral fiber of America, tried to convince him to turn the Angel computer over to the White House. Considering the government unfit to have such power in light of Nagasaki, the Japanese internment camps, and their inability to stop Stalin’s slaughter of millions of innocent people, Bart refused, unaware that such a decision set in motion a terrible chain of events.
After breaking a Communist ring to fulfill the history files in the Angel computer, Bart found himself forced to meet with J. Edward Hoover at gunpoint. At the FBI office in Maryland, Hoover ordered Bart to surrender all material and information pertaining to the future or else he would release evidence showing that Doctor Tomorrow was a communist. Unbeknownst to Bart, at that same moment Doris had inadvertently revealed his secrets to Guntar, who hiding behind the robes of the church had managed to cloak himself in respectability.
Surrounded by Hoover’s bully men, Bart knew that he had to make a break for it before they stripped him of his gadgets. Using his guile, Bart reached into his pocket and pulled out a remote control to summon the Prophet, his bulletproof car. Hopping inside, Bart made his getaway much to the fed’s chagrin. Engaged in a high-speed pursuit, and shot at from helicopters, tanks, and squad cars, Bart’s only escape was to plunge the Prophet into Baltimore harbor.
Unbeknownst to Bart, while he was running for his life Guntar had revealed his secrets to Joe McCarthy, who in turn shared the discovery with Hoover. While Bart ran from the law on the East Coast, the feds gathered potential witnesses for his trial, beginning with Cappy, who at that time was in his dead bed in a hospice.
Learning that HUAC had issued a subpoena for his arrest, Bart made a recording urging Doris to meet him in Paris in time for their child’s birth, then he made his way back to Simms–Forestall Aviation to ensure that the contents of the capsule would never fall into McCarthy’s hands.
Making his way to Long Island, Bart parked the Prophet inside one of the homes on the same street as the plant that he and Cappy had converted into a warehouse connected to their underground lair through a series of tunnels. As he went into one of the corridors, Bart noticed that the door to the lair was open from the inside. Running towards it, he was aghast to discover that Doris had led the Feds to the Angel computer.
===Trials With Tribulations===
Unwilling to surrender the capsule to the Feds, Bart threatened to blow up the facility with plastic explosive, and realizing that he was not bluffing, the Feds took their leave with Doris in tow. After stashing all the information from the computer that he had stored on disc into a duffle bag, Bart set off an explosion that destroyed the subbasement and everything inside it.
In the months after Bart went underground, HUAC subpoenaed everyone he had ever known, many whom testified under protest and others who did so willingly, like Doris, who had no problem spilling every single one of Bart’s secrets. Aware that HUAC would go after Cappy, Bart pulled whatever resources he had left to rescue him from the convalescence home so that he would not have to go through the pain of testifying.
While hiding in Orson Wells’ house, Bart and Cappy watched on TV as McCarthy accused them of creating atomic weapons on American soil after radioactive material of Russian origin was found in the wreckage of Dr. Tomorrow’s underground lair. To Wells’ surprise, Bart admitted that after he witnessed the power of the atom bomb on Hiroshima he decided that the best way to defend global peace was to have the same power. However, while Bart wrestled with the moral implications after he and Cappy developed a tactical nuke, Cappy accidentally locked himself in the containment chamber and took a fatal dose of radiation that not even the knowledge held within the Angel computer could cure. That night, Cappy died in Bart’s arms.
Though Orson urged him to leave the country, Bart decided to stay and try to win Doris over one last time, if for nothing more than to meet his daughter, but following Cappy’s demise things got worse. Russell Simms killed himself after the government closed his factory, while Doris, as a spokesperson for Reverend Cross’ “Christians Against Communism”, lectured the numerous women’s organizations about how he duped her into betraying the American Way of life.
Sometime afterwards, long after McCarthy disappeared from politics, Bart lived in the small town of Waylon, New Mexico under the assumed name of James Kirk. One day, Bart learned of an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth, an event not found in the history files, and that President Eisenhower was offering Doctor Tomorrow a full pardon in exchange for his help destroying it. Pondering what to do, Bart ultimately revealed whom he really was to the people of Waylon in the hope that they would help him fix the Omen so that he could go to Washington to ascertain the veracity of the asteroid
In the days that followed, the people of Waylon accomplished what would have taken Bart months to do. Donning his costume for the first time in a long while, Bart departed for Washington with renewed hope, unaware that this would be his last adventure in over a decade or that he was about to make contact with the people that sent the mysterious time capsule to the past.
===All The Way To The End===
Waking up a captive on a missile heading into deep space, Bart watched as Senator McCarthy mocked him on a closed circuit television monitor. As the missile approached Asteroid A–271, Bart’s scream awoke him from his nightmare and he found himself on the Omen over Washington, DC. Though hoping that the government would grant him amnesty from the McCarthy indictment, Bart suspected that A–271 was a ploy to gain access to his future technology, so, determined to find the truth, he called J. Edgar Hoover and asked to review all notes concerning A–271 before he surrendered. Expecting the Feds to trace the call, Bart set a transmitter in a phone booth that redirected the call from his cell phone to send them on a wild–goose chase.
Convinced that A–271 was bogus, Bart realized that the only reason the government was frantic to get their hands on his resources was because they had developed a way to read his discs. Needing to look at them to discover what history said the hoax was about, Bart had to infiltrate the Pentagon. Donning a camouflage suit, Bart had no clue how he was going to enter the building after he passed the guards. Running low on future gadgets due to his inability to manufacture new ones, Bart relied on a C–4 charge to blow the door open. Just as he was about to ignite the charge, however, the door opened from the inside and his nightmare began.
Walking inside, Bart came across a 9–year–old Mushroom Cloud, who claimed to be there to help him. With Cloud’s help, Bart made his way into the processing center, a room encased in bullet–proof glass filled with computers that he speculated were salvaged from the ruins of his old hideout. After Cloud entered the room through the ventilation shaft and opened the door for him, Bart created a glitch that drew the guards to the other side of the complex. Scanning the 50’s history folder, Bart discovered that the government saw his resources as a way to beat the Russians into space, so they created the A–271 hoax to lure him in with the promise of offering back everything they took from him long as he cooperated. Needing more information, Bart proceeded to scroll the files forward, when suddenly Cloud deleted the entire folder. Claiming to know everything that would happen, Cloud forced Bart to let him go with him if he wanted to know too.
Curious to know who sent him, Bart agreed to let Cloud stick around. As they escaped into the woods to get to Bart’s bike, Cloud told him that they would not need it as he had called a friend to pick them up. Just then, Orson Wells drove up to the entrance of the facility, and, while he distracted the guards, Bart and Cloud entered his car. Sometime later in Well’s penthouse, Orson gave Bart adoption papers and two passports forged by the MGM prop department at Cloud’s behest. Enraged, Bart refused to go anywhere with Cloud until he told him who he was. After hearing Cloud’s story, Bart demanded to know why he had involved himself in his affairs, which led Cloud to reveal that the rightful owners of his time capsule from the future, the unintentional creators of Doctor Tomorrow, had commissioned him to watch over Bart, a revelation that enraged him even further. Slamming Cloud against the wall, Bart demanded to know who the people from the future were, but all he would say is that he was there to see that there be no further screw–ups in the timeline.
Refusing to let Cloud out of his sight, Bart traveled with him to France, where they went underground and used the respite to rebuild most of his equipment, as history dictated that Doctor Tomorrow would return.
==The Age of Aquarius 1963 – 1975==
===Yesterday’s Grace … Tomorrow’s Child===
Returning to America in 1972, Bart and Cloud remained underground with their activities given the political climate of the era given that he was still a fugitive. As modern technology had begun to catch up to him, Bart felt that his greatest strength laid in his knowledge of coming events, so he turned Doctor Tomorrow into a mystical guide for a generation looking for direction. Surrounding himself with dopeheads and sex perverts, as Cloud called them, Bart aimed to change the future, while having grown tired of the voices in his head, Cloud had resorted to drugs to quiet them down, which rendered him useless to Bart. Though Bart demanded to know the location of the people who sent the capsule to him in 1942 so they could go their separate ways, Cloud refused to give up the information, except to say that they would not arrive for another 25 years.
With information he obtained from a schoolmate of hers, Bart contacted Shannon Martin, the daughter he had never known, and convinced her to go to LA. Meeting her at the airport, Bart was eager to explain to Shannon why he was not there for her when she was growing up, but then a group of phony Hare Krishnas under her command pushed him and Cloud inside a van and knocked them out with eater.
Awakening in a damp cellar strapped to a table, Bart pleaded with Shannon to let him go as he was her father, but she renounced him and called him a blasphemer. Removing the hood from his face, Reverend Cross, one of McCarthy’s hatchet–men, stepped forth and told Bart that, as a soldier of God, Shannon was helping them rid the world of his corrupting influence. With a smug grin, Cross revealed his plan to turn Bart into a soldier of God through a series of conditioning techniques administered by Shannon’s husband, Guntar Holtz. For an undetermined amount of time, Guntar and his soldiers of God hammered relentlessly on Bart day and night. Determined that he should understand the pain and suffering that their Christ endured, Guntar crucified Bart. Meanwhile, having sobered up, Cloud told Guntar that sometime in the future he would kill him and all his loved ones, a threat that Guntar knew, one merciless killer to another, that Cloud would carry out.
That night, Bart pleaded with Shannon to accept that he was her father and that Guntar was a war criminal, but, ever the zealot, she refused to accept the truth. Just then, Guntar, shaken by Cloud’s threat, entered the room with several Black Panthers sympathetic to Bart’s cause that he called to help Bart and Cloud escape in a bid to save Shannon from Cloud’s revenge. Believing that there was a better way, Shannon took Guntar’s gun and aimed it at Cloud, who preferred to die right there to dying as he foresaw he would in the future. Nevertheless, Shannon proved too cowardly to pull the trigger, so Cloud took the gun and aimed it at her. Before he could fire, however, Bart knocked the gun from his hand and stopped him from killing Shannon. As they left the room, Bart saw Shannon ask God to strike them down, which made him feel pity for her and loss for himself. Using gadgets that the Black Panthers brought for him, Bart defeated the guards and they made their way into a van waiting for them outside the compound. After he confessed that he lied to Guntar as he lacked the actual motivation to hunt him down, Cloud immersed himself into a drug–induced stupor.
Sometime later, as word hit the street that Doctor Tomorrow had returned, the underground’s most militant contingent visited Bart and told him of their intent to join Gilad the Warmaster, a warrior who had taken up the fight for the oppressed people of North Viet Nam. Reluctant to kill American soldiers to make a point to the politicians in Washington, Bart refused to capitulate. After the angry mob left, Cloud came out of his chemical stupor and told Bart that they had to go to Viet Nam. Consulting the future files, Bart found a photo of himself with an accompanying article that told of his guerrilla army and the empire he had carved out of the jungles of North Viet Nam. The article concluded with the report of his death at Gilad’s hands. Shaken, Bart asked Cloud if what he had read was true, but while refusing to answer, Cloud offered to pack their bags.
===The Eternal Struggle===
In the two years since he saw that photo of himself, Bart went from a guru of the love generation to ruler of a cadre of jungle tribesmen in Viet Nam, where, despite Cloud’s warnings, he captured many South Vietnamese officers that the history files recorded as survivors of the Eastern offensive. Repulsed by his new role, Bart knew that despite his attempts to alter his part in the history books, always with disastrous results, he was a slave to what was written, which made him hate being Doctor Tomorrow.
On the day that a correspondent took the photograph he had seen years earlier, Bart learned from Cloud that after a terrible event their paths would diverge and they would not see each other again until 1987. Though Bart pleaded with Cloud to sober up so he could find out the details of their split, he refused due to the pain of witnessing his own death in the future. Likewise, Cloud pleaded with Bart to be weary of the Warmaster, who the history files said would kill him. Following Cloud’s assertion that they would meet again, however, Bart came to doubt the veracity of the history files in light of all the propaganda disseminated throughout the war. 
Sometime after the Easter Offensive, Bart met with Gilad to end his alliance with him, but as he expressed his desire to let history decide the outcome of the war, Gilad demanded that he surrender his secrets to him so he could use them to shape the future. Wasted and looking to lash out at anything, Cloud warned Gilad that he could not hurt Bart cause they already knew that he existed in later history, then he threatened to use their database to hunt down and ambush him in the future, inadvertently revealing Bart’s hidden advantage. Enraged, Gilad left Bart with a warning that he would not let his fate or that of the planet be decided by the likes of him, which Bart understood to mean that Gilad had resolved that he would not leave the jungle alive.
The next day, Bart returned home aboard a native vessel with his most loyal men guarding his computer. As they left the shore, Cloud told Bart that they would be ambushed somewhere down river, and that though he would barely make it out alive and escape Saigon with the computer, something would happen to Bart that would keep them from seeing each other until 87. Thanks to Mushroom’s warning, Bart set a trap that took out most of Gilad’s men, but unfortunately he found himself facing off with an extremely pissed Warmaster. Pushing his 50’s, Bart mustered every scrap of combat knowledge and experience he could to defeat Gilad. Escaping after shooting Gilad with a grenade, Bart laid in wait armed with a laser strapped to his back, but just then Gilad jumped on him from above the trees and destroyed his weapon.
The force of the collision caused the ground beneath them to collapse, plunging them into a deep network of underground tunnels. Escaping Gilad’s grasp, Bart found a cache of explosives that he used to set a trap. As Gilad walked into the storeroom looking for Bart, he set off a pressure plate that activated an explosion. Meanwhile, Bart escaped through an underwater exit back into the jungle, then, while searching for his men, he became aware of the sounds of approaching A–7 Corsairs that signaled an air strike. Just then, Gilad crawled out from the Earth calling Tomorrow’s name. With bare bone and ganglia exposed, Gilad approached Bart with death in his one remaining eye, when then the corsairs dropped their cargo on top of enemy tanks and set off a massive explosion that destroyed the immediate are around them. Rising from the ashes, Gilad found Bart’s tattered costume and held it in his hand while laughing victorious.
 
Unbeknownst to Gilad, the explosion did not kill Bart. Found by a Khmer Rouge patrol that believed he was a downed American pilot, Bart became a prisoner of war. 
==The Art of The Deal 1979 – 1987==
===Journey From Tomorrow===
Spending five years in a POW camp, Bart endured excruciating torture at the hands of Major Ieng Han, who demanded to know about future events in Southeast Asia, secrets that Bart refused to reveal due to his prime directive. While enduring another battery of interrogations, Bart’s resolve crumbled as Han’s reminders of his failures gnawed at his very soul, when then he remembered that he was going to meet Cloud again in 1987, a memory that gave him the strength he needed to survive his ordeal.
The next day, Bart met a captured CIA agent who expected his agency to extract him fairly soon. Realizing that this was his opportunity to escape, Bart rebuilt his body to some semblance of its former self. A few nights later, in an uncharacteristic show of charity due to the holidays, Han provided Bart with clothes and hot food, then in a last ditch attempt to get Bart to reveal what the future held, he told him that he was dying, but Bart did not believe him. While a soldier escorted him back to his cell, Bart watched as a laser targeting sight transformed his jailer’s head into a shower of bone fragments and bloody meat. Realizing that the black ops extraction squad had arrived, Bart picked up the soldier’s rifle and went back to settle the score with Han. 
Making his way inside the shack, Bart aroused Han from his sleep with the barrel of the rifle. Recalling his oath never to take a life, however, Bart put the rifle down and walked away. As Han revealed that he had a gun trained on Bart the whole time, he confessed that he told the truth when he said that he was dying, and that he envied Bart’s imminent meeting with the people responsible for sending the capsule to him. Arriving too late to board the rescue chopper, Bart spent the following months evading the Khmer Rouge patrols as he made his way to the coast. Bandaging his face to conceal his Westerner appearance, Bart stowed away on a refugee boat that took him to Thailand, where he found freedom.
By 1984, Bart had used his knowledge of the stock market to set himself up as a rich philanthropist called Chester Russell, named so after his father and Cappy, when unexpectedly he heard from Cloud again for the first time in a decade. Although Bart knew that the laptop he had entrusted Cloud with had an electronic lock that made it impossible for anyone but him to access it, Cloud’s unstable nature made him apprehensive. Months later, while leaving a banquet in his honor where UNICEF voted him Humanitarian of the Year, Bart came across Cloud, who asked him for $175,000 USD he claimed were for Bart’s benefit.
Three years later, without the aid of the computer’s records of future events, Bart lost his fortune as a result of the stock market crash dubbed Black Monday and theft by members of his board of directors. Three years after that, Bart was a grocery clerk at a convenience store. A broken man, Bart had grown old and too bitter to care anymore, until one day, while returning to his meager apartment, he discovered Cloud waiting for him with the offer to help him find the makers of the time capsule and prevent them from sending it to 1942, thus preventing the birth of Doctor Tomorrow. Intrigued by the prospect of having a normal life beside the woman he loved and the daughter he never knew, Bart agreed to enter Doctor Tomorrow’s world one last time.
==The Tomorrow War==
===The Tomorrow War Part 1===
In late 1997, Bart’s estranged daughter Shannon had written a grossly fictional biography of his life that presented him as a troubled man drunk with power. Due to his success in convincing the world that he was dead, Bart was powerless to tell the truth, which made all his past deeds that were part of the public record victims of revisionist history. Appalled, all Bart could do was wait for the travelers from the future to arrive. Determined to erase the error that was Doctor Tomorrow, Bart planned to enlist Shannon’s help to convince the authorities to help them. Though the database had become useless since time had caught up to it, the device itself was the best evidence Bart had to prove his identity to Shannon.
Trying to forget that she had tried to kill him, Bart nevertheless rang the bell of Shannon’s house. Realizing that she did not recognize him, Bart told Shannon that his name was Russell and that he had found important documentation about her father. After chatting with her for a time, the pressure became too much for Bart to bear and he told Shannon who he was. Terrified, Shannon ran, but Cloud stopped her. Pleading with her, Bart told Shannon that he needed her help to repair the past and make things better, but she refused to help him due to his blowing her mother off after she spent years searching for him to ask for his forgiveness. Angered, Bart confronted Cloud and accused him of deleting the 1950’s history folder so he would not discover that Doris wanted him back. While Cloud told Bart that he did it for his own good because if he had gotten back with her he would have screwed the timeline, he was blindsided by Jason Simms, Shannon and Guntar’s son.
Facing the end of Jason’s bat, Bart and Cloud agreed to go, but as they left Bart made sure to leave the laptop behind in the hope that what it contained would convince Shannon. After his anger with Cloud subsided, Bart followed him to the old Simms–Forestall Aircraft factory, which Cloud claimed was where they would meet the travelers from the future. Making their way through the damp structure, Bart and Cloud reached the lathe that concealed the entrance to his former headquarters. While finding it odd that the lathe swung open with little effort, as if someone had been there recently, Bart’s suspicions about Cloud grew as they went down the stairwell. 10 minutes later, Bart witnessed the arrival of the time travelers from a hiding spot
The time travelers were archivists from 2,000 years in the future, who had traveled to survey the late 20th Century. Their mission objective was to restore historical and technological data of an era lost to them through the ravages of time with the aid of the time capsule that came to Bart in 1942 loaded with artifacts from 1998. Even though they were his mortal enemies and he had dedicated the later years of his life to their destruction, Bart could not help but feel overwhelmed with emotion. Suddenly, Bart realized that he was no longer a slave to recorded history and was in virgin territory. From that moment on, he was in control of his own destiny. After watching from their secluded corner as the time travelers changed into present–day clothes and departed for their mission, Bart inched towards the capsule to touch it and assure himself that it was real, but before he could Cloud stopped him and warned him that the capsule was programmed to returned to its point of origin if tampered with. Placing his trust in Cloud, Bart urged them to leave, but before they did Cloud stole a disintegrator gun that the time travelers left behind to get rid of any evidence of their presence.
Returning to Bart’s apartment, they discovered that Jason was waiting for them. As Jason asked why his mother was afraid of him, Bart tried to convince him that he was his grandfather to no avail. Threatening to hurt him if he went after his mother again, Jason turned his back on Bart to leave. Warned by Cloud that Jason was integral for their plan to work, Bart reached for a lamp and hit Jason across the head, knocking him out cold. Tying Jason to a chair, Bart told him his whole life’s story up to that moment, humiliations and all, in a bid to convince him that he was truly his grandfather and the man the world knew as Doctor Tomorrow so he would help them stop the time travelers, but Jason was still unwilling to believe him.
Giving Bart the gun, Cloud told him to use it to convince Jason. Assuring Jason that he would not hurt him, Bart shot a table with the gun and the blast made it vanish. Freaking out, Jason finally accepted that what Bart told him was true. Scared, Jason asked Bart if he would cease to exist if he helped him. Admitting that he did not know, Bart said that he knew how much Jason loved his mother, and asked him to think of the hardships and suffering that she and his grandmother had to endure because of Doctor Tomorrow and asked him once again to help him stop the time capsule from traveling to 1942 to spare them from that.
Promising to think about helping Bart, Jason accused Cloud’s motivations of being shadowy. Explaining that the truth was that the time travelers were going to kill him, Cloud said that his only hope was to help Bart change the timeline before it happened. One day away from when the capsule would leave for 1942, Bart, Jason, and Cloud had 24 hours to figure out how to defeat a dozen armed warriors from the future.
===The Tomorrow War Part 2===
On December 1997, a team of T.I.M.E. Vaulters arrived on the Simms–Forestall Aircraft factory. After locating the subbasement, the director used a gravity baton to open the rusted lathe. As they made their way inside, Perrimann asked what purpose the structure served, to which the director said that it was speculated that Dr. Tomorrow had operated from there. When Perrimann mentioned that people believed that Tomorrow was one of them, the director dismissed his notion due to Tomorrow’s personal involvement in the course of 20th Century history. Reiterating their mission to gather technological information to uncover which of it had the potential to evolve into the free–will robotics of their era, the director reminded Perrimann that altering the timeline to halt the free–wills’ development would be the job of other agents. As Perrimann uttered the theory that ripples in the continuum had already occurred as a result of tampering with the timestream, the director rejected the theory as unprovable due to the mind’s inability to survive a temporal metamorphosis. After explaining that it would take an individual with a multi–temporal consciousness to retain memories of an alternate reality, the director ended the debate. Their mission complete, the team returned to their point of extraction where the Vault doorway was waiting for them. As he stepped through the Vault, the director received the strangest sensation that the factory was significant in some historical way and left in doubt.
Three months later in Bart’s apartment, Bart sent Cloud to gather supplies he would need for their mission. Reluctant to go, Cloud tried to convince Bart to send Jason, but he refused because Jason had the task of physically assaulting the compound and had to study the factory blueprints. Making his way down an alley, cursing his inability to cheat fate, Cloud gave in and hoped that he could change the outcome of what was to come. Several minutes later, a large car stopped beside Cloud and a man pulled him inside. As the man inside the car introduced himself, Cloud interrupted him and revealed that he already knew that he was Arthur Noble, a lowlife mob procurer who had sold his soul to the Vaulters. Impressed by Cloud’s multi–temporal consciousness, Noble explained that the Vaulters paid him handsomely to take him to them.
Twelve hours later, Bart regretted trusting Cloud after he failed to return, while Jason expressed his concern that Cloud was holding something back. Conveying his respect for Jason after he agreed to help him knowing that he might not survive, Bart told him that he was proud to have him as his grandson. After conceding that he should not have existed in the first place, Jason agreed that they had to set things back on track even if it cost him his life before he left to grab the supplies Cloud was supposed to get. Holding a picture of his father in his hands, Bart soliloquized his wish that if all went well they might have a second chance. Meanwhile, in the abandoned factory, the Vaulters attempted to extract memory records of Cloud’s lifetime from his mind to ascertain if a temporal incursion had occurred. Elsewhere, Jason returned home to say goodbye to his mother.
A short time later, Jason and Bart used the old service conduit that ran from the factory to Bart’s secret garage to enter the subbasement. Using the disintegrator gun Cloud took from the Vaulters to break the slab flooring, Bart and Jason made their way inside the conduit. While Jason expressed amazement at what he saw, Bart asked him to concentrate on their mission as they might had to lay low for hours until the Vaulters vacated the facility, which would be the optimal moment for them to approach the capsule. Approaching the grating, Bart mused over how they would never know if they succeeded, as a new alternate timeline would replace everything. Their present would disappear and reality would melt away like a snowball in a furnace.
Entering the empty basement, Bart and Jason saw Cloud strapped to a chair and realized that he did not work for the Vaulters. Determined to find out why he lied, Bart released Cloud and demanded to know the truth. Refusing to give in on his demand, Cloud said that his plan worked and that Bart and Jason were expendable before he kicked the gun off Jason’s hand. As Cloud and Jason wrestled for the gun, Cloud knocked Jason out with a pipe and then stood up to face the barrel of the gun at the end of Bart’s hand. Demanding to finally know the truth, Bart threatened to kill Cloud, who mockingly revealed that he was the one who sent the capsule to the past in an effort to change the timeline to survive his inescapable fate at the hands of the Vaulters, who in the original timeline killed him after they were finished experimenting on him.
Confessing that what he did was designed to bring Bart there when history would repeat itself, Cloud said that the irony was that Bart had not been changing history but setting it right, with the exception that this time he was there to free him from the Vaulters. Disillusioned, Bart lowered his guard and Cloud took the gun from him. Aiming the gun at Bart, Cloud programmed the capsule to go back to 1942 with Bart inside so he would not alter anything. Claiming that their very presence had already disrupted the timeline, Bart convinced Cloud to connect with his future self to tell him what he saw. Appalled by what Bart what going to do, Cloud shot him and disintegrated his arm. Screaming in agony, Bart laid on the ground while Cloud gloated over him.
===The Tomorrow War Part 3===
Aiming the gun at Bart’s head, Cloud ordered him to get inside the time capsule to end the whole time mess he created. Grabbing Bart by his good arm, Cloud stated that the moment Bart laid eyes on the capsule it created an alternate timeline, when just then, Jason blindsided Cloud and beat him twice with a pipe. Kneeling beside Bart, Jason wanted to take him to a hospital, but Bart refused to go until they destroyed the capsule. Standing back up, Cloud fought like an animal and pummeled Jason. Standing over his beaten foe, Cloud threatened to shoot Jason with the disintegrator, but, as he fired, Bart leapt up and knocked them both inside the time capsule on purpose, sacrificing himself to save Jason. As the capsule vanished, Cloud claimed success at changing history where Bart failed. Pleading with Bart to stop the machine so they could finally be a family, Jason ran towards the capsule, when, as it vanished, Bart urged him to forget the past and live for today, believing in his heart that there would always be a tomorrow.
Finding himself on his own, Jason tried to escape from the Vaulters, but they roped him with liquid metal bands and demanded to know where he had sent the capsule. Though he refused to tell them, the Vaulters nevertheless located the capsule in 1942 and sent a retrieval team after it. Jason realized that if the Vaulters brought the capsule back before Cappy found it history would still unravel and he would wink out of existence. While Perrimann led the Vaulters through the Vault, the director stayed behind to question Jason.
 
Begging the director to call his men back, Jason explained that the capsule went back in time and created a man responsible of making the century what it was, and how Cloud’s escape before they returned changed history. Doubting Jason’s words, the director was adamant about retrieving the capsule and erasing any evidence of their visit to the 20th Century, including Jason. Turning his attention toward Noble, Jason warned him that the director would erase him as well to avoid making another mistake. Assuring Noble that he would not do that, the director pulled a gun out while Noble was not watching, but before he could fire, Jason warned Noble, who pulled out his own gun, and both he and the director killed each other.
Finding a control device on the director’s wristband, Jason dissolved the bands around his wrists. Though thinking about going home and crawling into bed, Jason though about his grandpa, and how for all he knew he might have survived the trip to 1942 only to find himself alone and unarmed against the Vaulters. Having seen Perrimann work the controls, all Jason had to do was hit the correct sequence of panels to activate the Vault. Catching sight of the Doctor Tomorrow emblem on the control chair, Jason felt like he had received a message from the past telling him that he still had a chance, as even if the elder Bart had died, his younger self was still there, about to be led to his destiny by Cappy.
After donning the director’s Chrono–suit and familiarizing himself with its weaponry, Jason activated the chronal–jump and leapt into the Vault. Appearing in 1942, Jason faced opposition from Perrimann’s team right out of the gate. Employing an E.M. dampener, Jason shut down the Vaulter’s equipment (as well as his own), and proceeded to dispatch all of them. Standing over his unconscious foes, Jason smashed a tracking module on the side of the capsule to ensure that no one could recall it to the future. Just then, a bullet flew past Jason and killed Perrimann before he could kill him. Looking up, Jason saw Bart standing on the stairwell holding a gun, having survived the stress of traveling through time, while Cloud, who was not as lucky due to his multi–temporal nature, evaporated into to a powdery green ash.
Aroused by the arrival of the capsule, Cappy followed the commotion down to the sub–basement, where after some time, Jason convinced him of what had transpired. Collapsing on the floor, Bart begged Cappy never to reveal any of it to that era’s version of him, for history depended on his silence. As Bart laid dying, Jason asked him why at the last minute he deliberately messed up his plan by going back there. With his dying breath, Bart said that in the moment that Cloud was going to kill Jason he no longer felt he had to right his wrongs, for he stopped seeing the child of his worse enemies and started seeing his grandchild, the child he loved, the child who deserved to live. Holding Bart’s body in his arms, Jason released a mournful bellow.
After Jason returned to 1998, Cappy sealed the Vaulter’s bodies behind a false wall, where they stayed until that day. Warned of a coming crisis by Deus Ex Machina, his Chrono–Suit’s AI, Jason surmised that in a way Bart had seen the beginning of that event in the evil of the Teutonic Knight, the strange superhuman abilities of Gilad, the Warmaster, and the heroes of Operation: Stormbreaker. Figuring that if he was going to survive the crisis he might need some cash, Jason appropriated a case full of jewels meant to be Noble’s payment for helping the Vaulters. Before leaving the factory, Jason branded his Chrono–Suit with Doctor Tomorrow’s emblem to carry on the family tradition. That night, a massive explosion destroyed the Simms–Forestall Aircraft facility and all its secrets.
Five months later, Jason and Shannon visited Bart’s grave at the cemetery, where Jason told his mother how Bart saved his life and how much he loved them. Telling Jason that she finally understood that Bart was a good man, Shannon shed a tear for her father for the first time in her life. Embracing his mother, Jason thought that though part of him believed that he would never be as genuinely good as Bart Simms, the man, another part believed that if he was ever going to alter the course of destiny, he had to be a whole lot better than Doctor Tomorrow, the hero, ever was.
Category: Doctor Tomorrow
Category: Independent Properties