acautionarytale

Walter is elbow deep in a haphazardly bolted together looking machine, wires and circuity streaming out and pooling on the floor. Tools are everywhere, and there are the remnants of several milkshakes in a small space off to the side. There are notes and schematics and formulae scribbled on the three tablet-boards scattered around the room. An unmarked beaker rests beside a cold bunsen burner, a third filled with a pale pinkish substance. The music system is kicking out Holst, though not so loud as to hear Trygstad.

He gives Michael a nod and a small smile. They're coming along rather well, if not a wee bit ahead of schedule. Sleeping for about forty-five minutes, in fifteen minute bits, helps.

"Doctor. What's happened?" Walter doesn't like 'very strange'. He doesn't have time for distractions.

She trundles up to Walter, stepping over cables and boxes and small technological thisthats.

"Hello, Michael," she says, giving the boy a brief smile before handing a tablet to Walter. It's playing a video recording someone made of a random piece of reality just... shimmering and another image fading in in a small spot. The weird part of it is, the new image looks strangely familiar. Isn't that... Harvard?

"We have not detected any anomalous effects from it so far other than the visual. It simply... comes and goes. It doesn't leave any sort of permanent change. We'd almost thought it was some kind of hallucination until this video was taken."

Michael peers at it solemnly.

Walter watches it through three times, finally pausing right where the section of reality has partially phased. It looks all too familiar, and not just because it's Harvard. He's seen it happen before.

Before.

He slowly walks past Trygstad, fingers playing over the tablet's surface, backing the video up and replaying it again. That ripple. It's nothing you forget twice. He stops and turns, fixing her with a manic gaze she's only come to recognize in the last few weeks.

"Do we know where this is coming from? Specifically?" He flips the tablet around so she can see it. "And is it happening anywhere else, or is it contained in this area only?"

Trygstad peers at it again. "This has been the only location, so far. The size of the anomaly does not change, only the duration of its appearance."

She reaches out and pokes a couple controls on the tablet, calling up a map. A wee circular point is highlighted near the edge of Oslo, not far from the island they're on, now. "This is where it's been appearing, every time."

"That's very odd. We're miles away from Boston. That's Harvard University; at least, it's the campus where the Kresge building resides. It shouldn't be here. A chunk of Boston shouldn't be in Oslo." But there it is, wavering in and out.

"Has anyone taken a closer look?" There's a note to his voice that could easily be read as, 'because if anyone hasn't, I will.'

"The Kresge building? Is that not where you used to work?"

Things are getting a bit too coincidential for Trygstad's taste.

At the mention of a closer look, she shakes her head. "No-one has dared enter it, yet. We've taken readings and that's all, so far."

Michael places his hand on Walter's. He's a bit worried about the anomaly and what charging into it might do to Walter's temporal stability. He wants Walter to be careful with this....

Walter looks at Michael, and he understands, somehow.

"I've seen something like this before, only I've never seen such displacement. If I'm correct, that area what keeps shifting back and forth, should be in Massachussettes. It's where I used to live." Walter rubs his jaw, then starts to pace, full of energy. It's hard to tell if he's excited, agitated, or both.

"Can I see what you've found so far in your readings?"

"Certainly." A few pokes at the tablet bring up a plethora of graphs and readouts and strings of data. This anomaly, self-contained, appears stable for all its... anomalousness. Just a piece of twenty-first century Boston phasing in and out a spot in twenty-second century Oslo. It appears to be large enough to encompass the entire Kresge Building.

It almost looks like... some kind of variation on the bridges between universes, only bridging time rather than realities. As though... one could walk into the building and be in the time the building came from.

Michael peers at it solemnly, then turns his gaze to Walter.

Walter studies the tablet further, brows drawing together and the lines in his forehead growing deeper.

"I don't understand how this is happening. Boston is a ridiculous amount of miles away. Places should only overlap. But I've never had as much experience with time," he says, chagrin peeking through the sound of Walter's mental gears.

He pokes and prods the pad, looking for something. He wants to know if there is a way to pinpoint the exact date.

"I'm afraid this isn't something I was able to forsee. Time doesn't like to be manipulated. I know. It'll always try to return to center."

He looks worriedly at Michael.

"While what we did wasn't a mistake, not to us, I think we've swung our pendulum far, far from center. This," he says, pointing to the anomaly, "is gravity trying to draw us back."

Unfortunately, the readings don't get much more accurate than 'early spring.'

"Are you saying that it will follow you?" Trygstad asks curiously.

Michael, for his part, looks solemnly at Walter, then at the tablet, then at Walter again. He has a kind of basic, instinctive understanding of what Walter is saying. It's as though he can feel this pull back to centre.

"I'm not sure, but if we," he indicates Michael, "are the reason for it, which I am hypothesizing we are, then it may very well do so. But why Harvard, I wonder? The lab? I wonder if I left the kettle on." He's joking, but he does wonder if he's left something there that has caused this sort of thing, a beacon perhaps. Did they keep an observer beacon there? He can't remember, damnit.

He wishes he could just ask for Michael's opinion. While the boy let him know when things were important, it would have been good to hear his traveling companion's side.

Walter thought for a moment.

"Do you have anyone here who I might be able to consult? Someone close, perhaps?" He needed more to go on than his gut. Belly would have told him to just go for it.

Belly wasn't always right.

Michael, unfortunately, doesn't know much more than what he's already passed on. His solemn gaze looks the slightest bit worried, though. His brow furrows almost unnoticeably.

A phone rings. Trygstad rummages in a pocket and finds it, holding it up to her ear. "Trygstad." A pause and she answers with a few sentences in Norwegian to the effect that whatever was said was understood and would be passed along. Another pause, and then more Norwegian--asking if she might speak with the caller in person, then a thankyou before hanging up again.

"As it so happens," she says, stuffing the phone back into her pocket, "I was just talking to someone who's made a rather extensive study. Would you like to come with me to see him?" She gives a smile vaguely reminiscent of the rueful grin that would occasionally cross Olivia's face.

"I would be delighted," Walter says, a smile spreading over his face. Finally, some help! He hesitates for a moment, then grabs the tablet he's been using to keep notes as he's building his machine.

"Lead the way!"

Is that a smile on Michael's face? the tiniest of tiny lil brief smiles? Quite possibly. He follows along after the two adults, quiet as ever.

As they walk, Trygstad pokes a few buttons on her phone and then hands it to Walter. "The first anomaly appears to have faded. But there is a second, not far away, showing a different location. This one appears inhabited."

Indeed it does. There's an image on the phone, grainy and wavery like the last one. It's the inside of a library, of all things, but not one anywhere near Harvard if the view outside is anything to go by. No, this library is really old, and besides the usual library things, seems populated with eye-hurting statuary and disturbing things in tanks.

And some very familiar people. And some very unfamiliar, who really should not be there.

Edited 2014-04-20 02:17 (UTC)

Walter gasps, stumbling as he follows the doctor. He manages to catch himself before faceplanting, but doesn't seem to have noticed. His attention is fixed on the phone.

"I'm not familiar with this place. Harvard, yes, but..." He squints, making sure he's seeing things correctly. Most of the figures there make him smile, but his gaze is drawn to one that pulls his expression taut.

Breathless, "No, no no no no no."

An Observer. They had failed, after all.

Both Michael and Trygstad stop short at hearing this breathless string of nos, craning their necks to see what could be on the screen that's troubling Walter so. Michael's eyes go wide, but Trygstad squints in confusion.

"Isn't that one of those Observers whose existence you annulled?" she asks.

The other people don't seem to be afraid of him. In fact, it appears as though he's been brought to this place by Astrid and Peter and Donald... to meet another Observer. They all stand about talking in far too relaxed a manner. What is going on in there?

And, as though that wasn't strange enough, Peter appears to look directly into the camera.

"What is he doing?" Trygstad asks, thoroughly lost, now.

Edited (argh html) 2014-07-18 06:45 (UTC)

"I... I don't know. They shouldn't exist." And neither should Donald. And where is Olivia? "Maybe it's..."

Walter goes quiet, peering at the video feed as Peter stares into it. His stomach drops through the floor, extremities going cold and tingly, threatening to buckle. He touches the screen, just as he might his son's cheek.

"Peter, forgive me," he whispers to the image.

Michael puts his hand on Walter's arm again, trying to comfort his thoughts. He doesn't want Walter to fall into despair, to give up. Maybe there is still something that can be done. Please focus.

Trygstad, on the other hand, attempts to gently pluck the phone from Walter's hand. "It is even more important that we go... Professor Samuelssen may have information that can help us with this."

"I... yes, of course. Lead on." Walter lets her take the phone and follows along, preoccupied with his thoughts and distant. He gives Michael a brief look. It's ok, this is all simply very overwhelming, on top of having practically no sleep in at least three days straight. He's feeling the latter more as they leave the room and head away from the project he's thrown so much of himself into.

"Have I met Samuelssen?" He honestly doesn't remember.

"I do not think you have, yet," Trygstad answers, continuing down the corridor. "He is... reclusive."

All this walking eventually brings them to a door very like the other doors in this brightly-lit place. She stops and touches a door control.

A voice answers through a speaker in Norwegian, to which she replies in kind. There's a beat, then the door slides open.

Inside is... well, a giant laboratory, filled with tables and tables of machinery both contemporary and not. And one man, who looks as though he'd been expecting Walter all along.

"Doctor Bishop," he says in startlingly unaccented English. "I've heard so much about you." He puts his hand out to shake.

Walter understands reclusive. In one timeline, he spent three years in his lab, unless absolutely necessary. It was strange how the memories of that time were still fading, but there were things he knew he'd never forget, like the absolute uninterest ~~terror~~ of even thinking about setting foot outside the safety of his makeshift home. Yes, he knew reclusive. He wonders, as he walks, if this man has gone to such extremes.

The man's laboratory instantly makes Walter feel more relaxed, because it's familiar territory, even if he knows through the feel of the floor under his feet, the smell of particular levels of ozone, the taste of violet on the tip of his tongue, that it is not his own space. He'd never find that again.

He's impressed by the man's smooth English, and with only a slight pause of hesitation--one held over from the other self, the part of him that is fading--he reaches out and shakes the scientist's hand.

"Good to meet you. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with your work, Doctor." He's already forgotten the man's name... pity.

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i am SO SORRY for being late, i will do better next time

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it's been six weeks...?!? I should be shot...