The runaway van is - 

Not a problem in the slightest because he looks both ways before crossing the street, like any person with intelligence?

- carrying something the city's other superhero (superhero, supervillain, what's really the difference...) made which is firing beams of glowing energy that disintegrate things they hit, while she chases after it screaming apologies.

Dodge, dodge, dodge, dodge - 

"Oh my god I'm so sorry -"

The beams are getting more frequent! Previously they were blasting, like, dust specks. Now a sign just disappeared.

Dodge, dodge - 

ZAP.

... The Titanium Tyrant takes a moment to stand up, pat himself down, and catch his breath.

Where is he?

In what appears to be a shop, closed for the evening. Superhero figurines and merchandise line the shelves, including "Armsmaster Patented Super Fly Swatter", "Miss Militia's Bandana", and "Velocity Shoes, By Nike".

Mmm. Unfortunate. (He's never heard of any of these people, but there are plenty of local heroes he hasn't.)

Is there a security camera looking at him? Are there windows? If so, is there anyone on the street outside?

(All these are being checked in the first fraction of the second.)

The security cameras are all aimed at places someone might plausibly try to enter the store through, not the places where someone might spontaneously appear from thin air. There are windows! It's night outside and the street seems empty. 

There's also a movie poster advertising 'Legend Lights Up Seattle: Coming to Theaters Fall 2010'. It shows an extremely handsome man gazing fondly into the eyes of a costumed hero, while a single cup of coffee sits on the table between them, foam on the surface formed into a heart.

The poster looks old, like someone put it up a while ago and hasn't gotten around to taking it back down. 

Well, while he wants to get out of the store without getting seen by a security camera, which is pretty easy especially if he's willing to compromise on the back of his head being visible, there's some nonsense that needs noticing, first:

2010. An old poster. The obvious explanation for that and for all these new heroes is time travel - this store doesn't look fantastically rich or futuristic - a bit odd - he's sure the cameras are better, but - 

- He'll spend another half-second scanning for dates on objects in the room. Plenty of things will have a date of manufacture in small print, or say "new since" or just include a suspicious "the 1982 model Whatever". This is an easy hypothesis to start testing.

Years on products range from 2009 to 2011.

Well, that is horrifying. Most likely this is a hallucination, or quite probably an elaborate trap, and possibly it is dimensional travel to an alternate universe thirty years in the future, but there is another alternative to consider and it's a very bad alternative.

He will depart, avoiding the cameras. He wants a a public library, but he will settle for a newspaper, a passerby he can ask for directions to the nearest public library, or or a taxi he can tell him to take him to the nearest public library.

The first one of these he can find is a newsstand that's just now opening up, selling newspapers from today, January 22nd 2011. Apparently the Sailors are going to the NBA playoffs this year, and a city council member was photographed at an E88 rally.

Fascinating! He has quite a lot of money but thirty years of inflation will do very bad things to his ability to use it. He'll buy one and casually ask the vendor, "Do you have the time?"

"Four thirty," replies the vendor, who normally has at least another half hour to drink his coffee and properly wake up before his first customer.

"Thank you." And by whatever streetlight there is he will try to tell what world this newspaper is from. Are there any names he recognizes in it - the Survivor, Minerva, Reagan? Are there more unfamiliar supers? What technologies do they casually mention that are alien to his world? Some progress must have taken place in the thirty years he is expected to believe passed.

There are plenty of unfamiliar supers: Hookwolf was at the Empire Eighty-Eight rally with the city council member, there's a blurry picture that was reportedly taken on someone's cellphone. Local villains by the names Uber and Leet dressed up as video game characters "Mario" and "Bowser" and broke into a nearby branch of the US Mint, throwing fireballs and stealing cash. The entire thing was "live streamed" over the "internet" which is mentioned in a few other articles and seems to be a ubiquitous electronics communication network - apparently the newspaper itself can be accessed over the internet.

In the answers to Thursday's rather atrocious crossword puzzle he finds Henry Kissinger's name. The clue was "Best smoocher in Nixon's cabinet".

The Tyrant is exited about the future! There's some cool future stuff he will be eager to know about, just as soon as he can break out an encyclopedia that can tell him how to use it.

He'll tell the newspaper vendor he was looking for the library and got lost, he have any idea where it is? (If this fails, he can ask variants of this question to the next few people he sees.)

The vendor has no idea, but the second pedestrian he asks does. He is provided with directions to a grand but poorly maintained library. A larger than life metal statue of a sailor looking through a telescope stands out front.

Progress! He'll walk inside and take a look around. It look like a normal public library to him?

Almost! There's a row of computers for visitors to use on the first floor. 

Future computers, at that.

In the present, where he lives, there are really two possibilities for computers. For tinkers, there's AI sidekicks with a visual design based on whatever sci-fi movie they loved growing up that you communicate with by issuing voice instructions (that is, talking to them). For absolutely everyone else, there's the Apple II. This is not an Apple II; it is shiny and futuristic and has some kind of screen he hasn't invented yet. He wants to check out the computer; this is truly excellent.

Unfortunately, he's at a public library, not talking to Mechanos who just invented this last week, which means it is also going to be agonizing.