Future Distractions is an Amy Rose complete story, co-starring Tekno the Canary, that appeared in Issue 139 of Sonic the Comic.

Staff

• Lew Stringer - script
• Carl Flint - B&W art
• John M Burns - colouring
• Tom Frame - lettering

Story

As part of the Eternity Ring story arc, Amy and Tekno are about to arrive at their next destination. Surprisingly, a panda welcomes the girls by name, leading the heroes to wonder how they know them. The caped panda excitedly declares that this is Mobius, over 3000 years in the future! 5000AD is completely different to present-day Mobius; history chips are edible chips that teach people while they eat, cars are only invisible to those without special lenses and children avoid school by wearing computerised caps. Tekno is distraught, realising her usually keen technological eye is completely outdated in this time period. Amy calms her down, knowing the Ring of Eternity must have sent them here for some reason.

Sure enough, a great white flash washes across the Zone and it seems as if all the power has gone out. Shoddy crs are no longer invisible and hover boots cut out as the evil Gremlyn has absorbed the city's electrical power into his "power-armour". The terrified citizens flee without their technology and Gremlyn fires some of it back at Amy and Tekno. The heroes flee into a museum to find something to help them while Gremlyn announces that Mobius is all his. However, the robot is soon defeated by an ancient trebuchet brought from the museum which fires a giant, crushing boulder on the villain. As Gremyln gets carted away by the police, the citizens apologise for becoming too dependent on technology and laughing at the heroes. As they fade away to the next destination, a caped duck laments not being able to warn Amy and Tekno about the dangers ahead. Never mind, says the panda, as they'll find out soon enough.

Trivia

• This is Amy and Tekno's first trip through time on their journeys.
• Amy and Tekno's adventures are top-sellers, despite their never being any indication that their journeys were ever talked about. Also, it suggests that their tales outsell even Sonic the Hedgehog's.
• A statue of Sonic shows him in his current "upturned spikes" look, suggesting he was more famous after the events of The Final Victory.
• One of the invisible cars is a "Skoda", an Earth car. At the time, Skoda was renowned for making terrible cars, hence this one's appearance, although they have improved their reputation somewhat more recently.
• Many people fall from the sky during the powercut and there is no indication that any of them survived their fall...
• Gremlyn is spelled exactly the same as Planet Gremlyn, an area visited by the girls during their tour.
• The comic has sometimes suggested there were no weapons and conflict before Doctor Robotnik came along. Obviously if there were trebuchets, that's not true.
• The caped duck looks a little like Big Bill Screwloose.
• The panda's warning is a bit odd in retrospect: it's presented as a warning about the Eternity Ring trip but nothing disasterous happens to the girls then. Maybe he wanted to warn them about the Game Over story arc.

Timeline

The previous Amy Rose story was Day of the Puppets. The next story is Out of Time.