The Flying Dutchman

Origin

Rikkard Rynders was a professor of applied sciences from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He moved to the United States in the 1960s, employed at Vandermeer University. Besides science, Rynders taught his students his political philosophy. It consisted of pacifism, peaceful protestation over the Vietnam War and defiance of the American military-industrial complex. His favorite student was Emily Rice. She first became his teaching assistant and then his lover.

Rynders’ greatest ambition was to discover a method for time traveling. He practiced astral projection and psychedelic drugs to leave his body behind. This worked fine when his consciousness in astral form traveled to various locations in the present. But when cast into the timestream, Rynders discovered too late that there was no way for him to return to his body. He traveled back and forth in time, even being able to witness the birth of the universe. But as a disembodied consciousness, Rynders could not interact with others, affect events or settle at any point in time. He considered himself cursed and started calling himself the Flying Dutchman of Time.

Rynders at some point managed to have a form of interaction by appearing as a ghost-like apparition to observers. He started “haunting” Vandermeer University in the 1980s, where Rice was now its Dean. Bree Daniels, a student reporter, managed to gather information on the resident “ghost” and told Rice. Emily was soon able to recognize her missing mentor without being able to actually interact with him.

Rynders found a way to make better contact with the Firestorm composite consciousness, adding himself as an uninvited fourth member. He managed to transport the entire Firestorm body to the 1960s and attempted to use it to change events and prevent his past self from starting the experiments. The regular Firestorm personas actively tried to stop him, fearing what a change in the timeline would effect in their own era.