It was Ken's tenth birthday, and nothing happened.

Okay, no. That wasn't fair. A lot had happened; it just wasn't Professor-related. Kevin 11 had broken out of the Null Void, with help from his son, Devlin. Well, not just Devlin, Ken too—he insisted on sharing the blame no matter how many times Devlin tried to say it was his fault; Devlin had been used by his father and then he'd used his friendship with Ken to break him out. Nobody blamed him for that other than himself. Dad tried to explain that Kevin used people, but it only made Devlin feel worse.

That was when Ken got the idea to drag him into their room and play videogames until they both forgot all about Kevin. Devlin liked that plan.

Sharing a room with his new foster brother wasn't so bad, but Dad constantly went nuts with the mess they left behind. As it stood, they had to dig under a pile of clothes and toys to find the controllers for their game.

"Found it!" he cried.

"Great," Devlin answered, kicking away an old Sumo Slammers: Samurai doll. But once he did, he noticed a box. "Hey, did you forget a birthday present or something?"

"No," he said, walking over. "Oh, that thing."

"Huh?" Devlin asked.

Ken took the box and opened it. Inside was the photo of the Professor he'd taken three years ago, along with some drawings and notes he'd written on paper instead of a computer. It was low-tech, but Great-Grandpa always said that sometimes, doing things the old-fashioned way was for the best. And in any case, nobody expected him to write something down instead of try to lock a computer file.

"It's something I've been trying to figure out for a while," he explained.

"Wait," Devlin said, looking carefully at the picture. "I know him."

"You do?"

Devlin nodded. "Called the Professor? Speaks in riddles? Knows a lot about space?"

"Yeah," Ken answered. "That's him. How do you know him?"

"He showed up a few times," he explained. "I thought he was a scientist for Firefly City's research station, since he took me up to watch the Dragon Storm once."

"The Dragon Storm?" Ken repeated, in shock. "That's where I took this picture!"

"No way," Devlin said, taking a closer look. "The colony was only there for a day—how'd he get between me and you so fast?"

"He couldn't," Ken answered. "He was in two places at the same time."

For what would become the first of many times, Devlin gave him a look of absolute confusion—no, that wasn't quite right. "Confusion" was trying to understand a mysterious professor with teleportation and other weird powers who showed up on Ken's birthdays and said something cryptic before disappearing. "Confusion" was Ken taking the picture, then bringing up the family photos from his computer, and pointing out the difference to Devlin.

"See this picture?" he asked, bringing up a photo of his family at his late birthday party three years before. "This is from when I was seven. Notice anything about Dad?"

There wasn't a word in English for the look on Devlin's face as he asked, "Well, he looks tired, but I don't get..."

"Not him being tired," Ken insisted, his brain already lightyears ahead of Devlin's. He switched to a photo of his Dad actually taking the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take him to his first day of kindergarten. "That's when I was five. See the difference?"

Devlin did not. The expression on his face didn't change. Impatient, Ken sighed and said, "His hair—it's not even grey then. Dad doesn't like it when I point it out, but he's getting old. There's more and more grey hair every year."

Now, it was beginning to click, and Devlin said, "So Ben keeps getting older. And you keep getting older."

"Right," Ken answered. "But the Professor isn't."

There was a pause, and finally Devlin asked, "So what does that mean?"

Ken didn't know how to answer. But he caught the glow of blue light from behind him, followed by a familiar voice asking, "Yes, what does it mean?"

They turned around to see the Professor, smiling. For a moment, they looked at each other, each looking like an Opticoid in headlights.

"I'm very interested to hear what you think, Ken," the Professor insisted.

Ken looked at Devlin, but he only shrugged. He was on his own.

"Well..." Ken started, thinking hard. He glanced down at the photo. "You look the same." The Professor nodded. "And this was three years ago."

"Correct," he answered.

Ken got up and started pacing. "You know a song that my great-grandpa knows. 'Princes of the Universe,' by Queen."

Devlin quickly ran the term through the computer. "Whoa, that song's from 1986!"

"It's old enough that Dad doesn't even listen to it," Ken said. "You know Dad and Mom and Great-Grandpa. But Mom doesn't like you."

The Professor's smile didn't falter a bit, and he sounded too amused as he said, "No, she does not."

"She called you 'timewalker,'" he remembered. "And you teleported me to Saturn."

"Yes, I did," the Professor replied.

"While you were already there with Devlin," Ken said. "I didn't know what a 'timewalker' was back then, but it makes sense now. You can time-travel."

"Close," the Professor answered. "So close."

Now, Devlin caught on. "You can control time!"

"There!" the Professor replied excitedly. "Where one falters, the other picks it up and carries through! You both are correct—I am a time-traveler, but because I can control time, to a certain degree."

"A degree?" Ken repeated.

"It's more of a matter of figuring out how to get time to listen to you, rather than making it do as you say," the Professor explained. "I don't 'control' it any more than a parent controls their children." There was a brief shadow across Devlin's face, and he quickly added, "I keep in mind time is the one to make all the decisions, and simply help it along. Guide it in one way or another. In the end, I can't make anyone else's choices for them; I can only help show them either way."

They went quiet for a moment, thinking it over. Well, Ken was thinking it over; he figured Devlin was more feeling it over. The Professor had intervened in their lives, guiding them during difficult times, but he'd always left the decisions up to them.

Seeing them trying to digest it, the Professor said, "Let me show you another way, then."

The room around them disappeared, and they found themselves floating in the vastness of space, sitting above an erupting sun.

"That star you see below you is about to go supernova," the Professor explained.

"Won't that be dangerous?" Devlin checked.

"Oh, not for us," the Professor assured him. "The same properties that have shielded us from the vacuum are also in place to protect against radiation, heat, and all sorts of other nasty side-effects of a star exploding."

Now, the brothers traded grins and admitted, "Cool!"

The Professor smiled as Ken asked, "What star is this? Can we see it from Earth?"

"Oh, it's a very old one, from very long ago," the Professor explained. "The light from its explosion has been gone for a very long time, by the time you come from."

"So we went back in time again?" Devlin asked, grinning.

"Correct," the Professor replied. "And now, time must go forward." He put on his goggles. "I recommend that you don't look directly at it."

They quickly looked out of the way, but at the moment of nova, Ken saw light and dust beginning to spray out across the universe. When it was safe to look again, there was nothing left—the stardust was scattering across stellar winds far too fast for them to see anymore.

"That star's life has come to an end," the Professor said. "But something new can be born from what remains."

Below them, the stardust was condensing, forming light once more, surrounded by a ring of dust, then stone. Billions of years passed in seconds, and a new star was born, with brand new planets surrounding it.

"Had that star not exploded, these planets would not be here, and whatever life may spring from them would never come to exist," the Professor explained. "And far beyond this new system, the expelled matter from the supernova will give birth to new celestial bodies as well."

Almost as if the star's explosion had set off a chain reaction inside them, a strange inversion happened in their personalities. Where he'd normally become quiet, trying to deal with the emotions, Devlin was instead asking thousands of questions—about the star, about the planets, about what came next. Ken, instead, was the quiet one, rather than the curious one he usually was. He could only stare down at the new star, so much smaller than the old one, and wonder why couldn't it be both ways? An old star and a new one, no destruction needed to create new. No loss, no pain.

He hadn't realized that the Professor had stopped answering Devlin's questions until he placed a hand on his shoulder. Ken looked up at him in surprise.

"You don't understand," the Professor noticed. Ken shook his head. "Then I pray you never do."

"Understand what?" Devlin asked.

There was something dividing them, something Ken couldn't possibly understand. It was in the way Devlin looked so longingly and so hesitantly on the way Ken and his dad weren't afraid to show any emotion around each other—whether love or annoyance. The way he flinched when Ken's dad got mad, and the surprise when all that happened after was Ken storming off to his room and slamming the door after losing some privileges. The way he was surprised there was always someone to watch them when Dad was out, and the way he got very quiet and very sad when his own father was mentioned.

The way he looked at the new star, born from the destruction of the old, and seemed to understand. But what he understood, Ken couldn't grasp.

"Nothing," Ken finally answered with a smile.

"Then perhaps, it's best if I bring you home," the Professor decided. "Before your family decides I really am a bad influence after all."

This, Ken could smile at, and as the familiar blue light opened around him, he put no further thought toward the sudden brilliance of a supernova, the darkness following it, or the new light that formed from its ashes.