Well, it's been a while, but I'm finally back to my reviewing ways. This is where I'd normally list the creator's credits, but this issue unfortunately forgot to list any inside. Thankfully, we do have three names on the cover: writer Simon Spurrier, artist Ramón Pérez and colorist Sofie Dodgson. Pérez is also responsible for our cover, which shows Wally bleeding out(?) in a place that has been dubbed the Gallery of Monuments. This is a separate plane of existence where all the people Wally cares about are represented as statues depicting whatever they're doing at that moment. But the longer Wally stays in this place, the more he forgets who he is.
But we're not too concerned with Wally right now. Our story begins with Bart Allen finally being reunited with Max Mercury! Unfortunately, Bart found Max in that hellish landscape that Wally was barely able to escape from. This place is called Ickto, meaning the space halfway between a tick and a tock. A place where speedsters are drained of all their energy and are consumed by large, spiky snake-like creatures.
Max urges Bart to stay close to him, to not look back and keep running. But Bart is so exhausted he can barely move. Max helps Bart limp into a cave, optimistically telling him that if they stay true to their compassion and curiosity then the universe will provide the rest. Bart admits that he's new to this "whole holistic wisdom shtick," but he doesn't think the universe is listening right now.
Bart tells Max to leave him, saying it's his own fault that he got trapped here. Bart was trying to get to Timepoint, but he believes he got distracted and lost like always. But Max points out that Bart's main goal was to find him, which means that the universe did indeed provide. Unfortunately, Max and Bart are quickly discovered by the creatures and both are too worn out to attempt any kind of an escape. Max finally admits that this place has been abandoned by hope. He pulls Bart close to him, saying, "Don't look, my boy. All will be well. Every end is a new beginning. I'm so very proud of you."
Suddenly, several portals open up, revealing soldiers in white armor and odd, oblong helmets. The self-proclaimed Linear Men open fire on the creatures, but are shocked to see their weapons are unable to kill them. They are, however, able to keep the creatures at bay just long enough to place special discs on Bart and Max. As they start to teleport away, Bart repeatedly tells Max not to say it, but he does anyway. "The universe provides."
Our heroes are taken to a sort of space station, which is described as a "pocket reality formed of looped temporal waves." They are served coffee by a masked man who calls himself Inspector Pilgrim of the Linear Bureau Investigation Division. Max asks what that means, and Pilgrim says he could use a cosmic spider to pump 3,000 hours of paradoxical math into their heads to help them understand (Bart thinks that's an awesome plan) or they could just consider the bureau to be "timecops."
Bart interrupts this exposition to begin gorging on donuts and Max starts to apologize for him, but Pilgrim calls Bart brilliant and admits he's a fan of both of them, which makes all this a bit weird for himself. Pilgrim explains that he's a speedster in the fourth dimension, able to slide up and down the timeline of his own life. He says he used to be able to visit anywhere he liked up to 200 years from now — his peaceful death holding his lover's hand — but now his travel is limited to just a few months, thanks to all the timequakes, dimensional breakages and reality tears. In short, Pilgrim says that something has murdered the future.
But Bart instantly decries that as stupid, classically bad sci-fi logic. He explains that if something changes the timeline, it doesn't suddenly happen with photos fading out, etc., since there's no second layer of time to decide when the change comes into effect. Bart argues that the timeline would instead just always have been changed. Pilgrim quietly admits that Bart is a smart lad.
Pilgrim tells Bart that the missing ingredient is perspective, but at the quantum level, outcomes are contingent on observation and the story is defined by its audience. From Pilgrim's perspective, he was able to travel backward from the future to observe himself as a baby. But when he tried to slide back the other way, he ran out of time. Luckily, says Pilgrim, the Bureau was able to scoop him up in the femtosecond before he was lost to "an endless void of entropic suck." Once again, Max sees this as evidence of the universe providing.
Pilgrim says that the Bureau is investigating the collapse of the "lower planes" and a plague of cosmic scavengers. Bart suggests they visit Timepoint to enlist the aid of the speedsters there. But Pilgrim explains that Timepoint no longer exists. In its place is Ickto. Pilgrim says the Speed Force is falling apart and destroying reality along with it. The only question, Max asks, is who is doing this.
Pilgrim admits that the Bureau has had to make some difficult decisions while investigating this, and he leads Bart and Max into a room full of motionless speedsters and "chrononauts" floating in midair. Pilgrim points out Gold Beetle, saying she had to be forcibly removed from Timepoint, as she insisted on staying and fighting the scavengers. Bart asks if these people are dead, and Pilgrim assures him they're only in an extratemporal state. He says he's lobbied hard to prevent the Bureau from taking any more terminal actions, and not just because Gold Beetle is kind of his family.
Max asks Pilgrim why he's showing them this and Pilgrim explains that right before the Bureau saved him from an empty future, he received a burst of data from a super-advanced intelligence. Using this newly acquired cosmological abstractions and "hypergeometries" — or Arc Angles, as Pilgrim calls them — the Bureau was able to calculate that reality is crumbling because speedsters keep using their powers. Max calls that ridiculous, saying speedsters are the "breath of the universe." But then he realizes that Pilgrim rescued them to help provide a new perspective on the problem.
Bart, however, is able to see things clearly. He shouts at Max to stop thinking positively. This wasn't a rescue — it was an arrest. More Linear Men suddenly start teleporting into the room and Pilgrim admits that Bart was right. He justifies himself by saying he felt these two deserved an explanation before they become frozen in stasis. Bart and Max try to escape, but they're surrounded by too many soldiers and Pilgrim, who says he's made contact with a "shaper," whatever that means. Bart valiantly swings at Pilgrim, shouting, "Shape THIS, Copper!" But it's to no avail. Bart and Max are knocked down and Pilgrim brings in the "widows" — enormous spiders that begin webbing up our heroes.
Pilgrim points out that he's doing everything he can to fix this problem without causing any deaths, even though that's what the Arc Angles said they should be doing. He doesn't expect Max and Bart to show him any gratitude, but he vows to try to find a way to save reality without murdering every speedster in existence. Bart and Max try to call out to each other, but they're unable to get the words out. They are able to just barely clasp hands as the webs enclose them. Pilgrim walks away, saying they need to have faith that the universe will provide.
There's a bit more stuff with Barry and Mr. Terrific and, of course, Wally in the Gallery. But none of that seems to directly apply to Impulse. Or maybe that's just more of Spurrier being too smart for his own good and confusing my simple mind with abstract concepts and technobabble. But on a whole, I do think I'm still enjoying this series. I think. Focusing on Bart and Max always makes me happy, and watching them huddle together to accept their inevitable death is very emotional. But I wish that moment could have been played a bit bigger. Or maybe I'm just frustrated that their capture at the end overshadowed their near death at the beginning.
On a broader scale, I'm kind of perplexed that Spurrier would yank Impulse and Max away from the heavenly send off Jeremy Adams had granted them only to largely neglect them and ultimately imprison them far away from the rest of the Flash family. They learned some big, interesting things in this issue, but Barry and Wally weren't around to also acquire this information. So the whole thing leaves me a bit frustrated. But I will say that I find Pilgrim a compelling character and I'm enjoying the hints at his true identity.
Next time, Bart will make a very small appearance in The Flash #10.
