Stall

"You're early," I said. "Fourteen minutes early."

"Time is meager construct of meager mind."

"Tell me all about it in fourteen minutes." I was assembling a weapon A sort of telekinetic bomb. The weapon would most likely be ineffective, but I at least wanted to have time to finish it.

"Do not give me orders, pathetic being."

"Look who is sooooo sensitive. Fine. You have a loved one you want to kill?"

A portal appeared in front of me. I watched space slowly bend and warp and undergo a topological shift. After that, I saw Lucy, strapped to some horrifying  perversion of a hospital bed. Leering over her was an even more horrifying perversion of a face: Carnage.

I didn't waste time on anything stupid like begging Carnage for mercy. And Lucy was not conscious enough for any words of comfort to matter. Rather, I analyzed the structure of the portal. Learned a little bit of physics in the process. I guessed that Lucy was being held within the solar system. Not near a major massive body. I spend a fraction of a second spewing out electronic commands.

A mechanic box of my creation disappeared, and reappeared on top of Lucy. An instant later, it had disappeared again. "Teleporting away. Moving at a very large fraction of the speed of light, I should mention. It was a lot of fun to make. Shame I didn't give it any weaponry to kill Carnage. No matter. The goal is to get Lucy out of harms way. Should be a challenge to retrieve. Even for you." I sneered. "Looks like I just bought myself some time." And the longer he waited, the more of a head start Lucy would get.

"Time. Hmph. You retain mental trappings of ant on surface of Earth. Annoying ant." I could feel the power of my future self, filled with rage and frustration. He was about to do something bad. I needed him to get going.

"Are you going to go get her? I estimate that it will take your six or seven hours to catch up." He disappeared.

Well, my little stunt had bought me some time. Great. What to do with it?

Of course. Of course! Brilliant. I could do this. It would need to work at high pressures. Incredible pressures. How could I do that? Exotic matter. It would have to be nuclear degenerate. Which would mean I'd need to store it at high pressures as well. A blueprint began to take form in my mind. Then, another blueprint, explaining how to make the materials. And another blueprint, for an assembler. I started planning my actions. Refining my designs to be more efficient. I could do this. I could do this!

I did it. I did it with approximately two hours to spare. So I completed some of my other projects. Most of them were various types of explosives. I needed more diversity. So I upgraded my own powers, Not through any sort of technical insight, but through mindless and uninspired hardware upgrades.

Of course, mindless wasn't my style. So I kept my brain occupied with other tasks. I caught up with other efforts against the future demon.  I swapped ideas with Cognis. No, that's not true. I told Cognis what he should be doing.
I sent a probe to check out the burning remains of Genesis' home. Perhaps I would find something useful. Probably not, but you never know,
Then, I pondered my coming death. I really didn't want to die. I didn't want to go insane and lose everything. Was it necessary that all of that happen? Could I change the future? No. Dr. Demented existed. Exists? Will exist? Tenses are difficult when referring to time travel. Regardless, He came from somewhere. Could it be that he was faking. That really didn't seem probable. What kind of universe would that be?
Even trying to evaluate various courses of action in a universe where the effects of the decisions affected the past... it made my indestructible cyborg head spin.
I tried to reformulate what we knew about probability to take this sort of situation into account. I looked at the physics of circular time loops. And, just to be safe, I wracked my brains to see if I could figure out what was wrong with him. His was a broken brain. Maybe I could find a cure that he couldn't. Because that would be preferable to killing him. Killing myself.