Prologue:

The old man sat on a park bench and watched the world pass by.

He watched as the people laughed, cried, dreamed, fought, smiled, sobbed, were born, died, and killed each other in a never-ending cycle. He understood it all, knew the cycle intimately.

For every action there is an equal and an opposite reaction. Newton was talking about physics when he made that claim, but the man on the bench knew it worked for life as well.

Tried to convince Newton of the fact as well. Bloody stubborn bastard had refused to see the truth in that statement. Oh well. Sir Isaac was dead and gone and stuffed in a hole in the ground and he was still here, wasn't he?

But the man was old and his thoughts strayed. What had he been thinking of? Oh yes, the cycle, that never-ending flux where fantasy and reality mixed to form a new whole, a new reality.

The man could see it: could watch as the pieces slowly twisted in their eternal dance. He knew that they were all coming together once more, the individual pieces, would twist together and bond to form a complete picture.

This picture formed but once in a thousand lifetimes, when an infinite number of variables combined in one particular fashion.

The odds against such a happening...well, the old man wasn't entirely sure what the odds were, as mathematics had never been his strong point. But it was certainly a very large number.

But here his thoughts digressed once more. He really did not care about the mathematical probabilities. He just wanted to see the picture.

It would be damned funny when it happened, and he literally wouldn't miss it for the world. Behind what comic masks would ancient friends hide?

The old man (who really wasn't a man at all) rose slowly, yet gracefully, from his seat on the bench, and disappeared into the teeming mass of humanity.

Into New York City.