2645 AD: Time-travel researchers in Central City, led by genius temporal physicist Rel Vidar, make a last ditch effort to defeat the mad plutonium creature known as Mota (a 700 year old villain fought by all three 20th century Flashes). Physicist John Fox travels back in time in order to contact each Flash for assistance...but is unable to do so. Fox returns to discover the time lab destroyed...and that he has acquired super-speed abilities from the tachyon-based power source of the time-travel equipment. Fashioning a costume from those on display in the Flash museum, he takes on the Flash identity and defeats Mota by stranding him in the far future.

Fox leads a brief heroic career as the Flash of the 27th century, but eventually finds himself replaced by Speed Metal: a robotic law-enforcement corps powered by the energies of the Speed Force. The Flash is relegated to the most mundane tasks, and finds himself longing for the dashing days of the 20th century. He is assigned to assist Speed Metal in guarding a variety of time-related artifacts from the clutches of the time-travelling 20th century villain Chronos when, inexplicably, Wally West--the Flash of the late 20th century--materializes out of the timestream, weak and disoriented.

Explaining that he has become lost in time because the Speed Force has robbed him of his memory of his true love, a sort of 'lightning rod' that keeps Wally from slipping irretrievably into the force, West assists Fox in defeating Chronos. Fox asissts Wally by reminding him of his love's name--Linda. Wally accelerates into the timestream, and seeing his late friend Vidar's chronal gauntlets in the wreckage of the time institute, John gets an idea...

In 1996, Wally's friends and family are astonished to see John Fox materialize out of the timestream when Wally has not yet returned. Fashioning a new Flash uniform from the remains of his old one (shredded by the currents of time), John immediately begins to help Linda out on a case involving the villain Chillblaine. Chillblaine, in league with Dr. Polaris and Abra Kadabra, is attempting to start a new ice age, inspired by information Kadabra found in a worn-out book--published in 1997. The villains have kidnapped that book's author--Wally's aunt Iris--and force her to write the manuscript anew, hoping to find out more details of the future.

Fox believes the ice age in question is destined to set mankind back by centuries, and has in part come back to try to help stop it--knowing that Wally would not be here to help. He finds himself incresingly attracted to Linda, which sets a chain of events in motion which causes Wally's time-travel difficulties. But after one kiss with John, Linda becomes enraged with him for withholding important information in order to 'protect' her (an infuriating trait shared by Wally). Disgusted with John, Linda's faith in Wally returns--allowing Wally himself to come back at last...

But not before Linda walks outside and into the freezing effect of the villains' ice age machine, and is frozen to nearly absolute zero.

Wally, exasperated by John's apparent double-dealing incompetence, sets out to foil the villains' plot. With an assist from John, he does so... only to find that Speed Metal has pursued John into the timestream, and caught up to him at last. The Flashes soundly defeat the robots, and John apologizes for interfering with Wally and Linda's relationship... and then, knowing that he will always be a fugitive, uses the stolen chronal gauntlets and vanishes into time.