acautionarytale (
acautionarytale) wrote2014-01-20 12:13 am
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2168
Things have gone rather well with the assembly of this device. Michael has proven the most interesting companion--half instruction manual, half lab assistant. But there are rather a lot of things that his small hands can't quite work with.
So it's rather fortuitous, isn't it, when Dr Trygstad looks in on them. Another lab assistant walks right in! Splendid!
Of course, she had come with news.
"Doktor Bishop," she says, "Something very strange has been happening since yesterday. I thought you might want to take a look...."
So it's rather fortuitous, isn't it, when Dr Trygstad looks in on them. Another lab assistant walks right in! Splendid!
Of course, she had come with news.
"Doktor Bishop," she says, "Something very strange has been happening since yesterday. I thought you might want to take a look...."
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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.
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"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.
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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?"
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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."
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"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.'
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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....
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"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?"
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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.
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"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."
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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"Lead the way!"
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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.
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"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.
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"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.
i am SO SORRY for being late, i will do better next time
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.
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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."
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"Have I met Samuelssen?" He honestly doesn't remember.
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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.
it's been six weeks...?!? I should be shot...
terrorof 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.