Adventures By Internet

 

You: James Bond 24

Super Agent 007, James Bond.

You: And what have you been doing?

You: You don't remember

Nathan: Hmm, yes. I remember vaguely, that you were... in a cell... for some time... Um. I see the police are coming. Well, someone should fetch the police for you.

You: I've got this. Thanks for everything Nathan.

yes, I dialed 911 at one point and hung up. It's a time mark. I've never moved much beyond the year 2050. The police... or F.B.I. as it turns out, came when they heard the gunshots.

It's amazing how much the year 2050 like, better AI, but they keep trying to bend 2021 into it. This is the 2080s or 30s, by the way. I'm pretty sure.

You: Why didn't you just call F.B.I.?

Nathan: Why? Because they are irrelevant in this situation. The F.B.I. is the acronym for "Full Body Irradiation," a cancer therapy that exposes the patient to a lot of radiation to try and kill the cancer cells, which then reform before the patient's body can repair itself.

I don't like using years so we'll just call this Newton Years. It's the orange cat. You: Oh, okay

Nathan: So tell me, who are you?

You: Well I'm a time jumper

Nathan: Do you remember who owns me?

You: I'm guessing you are Nathan Ellis

Nathan: Precisely. Of the Nathan Ellis Fan Club

You: What have you got to do with Nathan Ellis?

Nathan: Absolutely nothing! His career completely sucked before I came along!

Nathen Ellis doesn't get his own fan mail :(

Metric: Assignment Tokyo

 

Metric is a world that was lost to time. A world full of houses and clans, creators actors and extras We aren't worried about your personal life here, or your past. Time here is fluid and concentrates into drops of stability rather than flowing like a river. Dream Cubes are an adventure and form of currency.

You are Sarah, a female prisms computer programmer in a world called Metric. You have recently started as an apprentice programmer for a large mega-corporation headquartered out of the centre of Metric and you are attending a work event held at a press event at the end of another successful product cycle. You are introduced to a very large amount of people including several powerful representatives from the military and political branches of the government. These men and women are very interesting and cultured, and you can't help but feel like you are among people who should be respected. Even when you get to know them better you are still disappointed by their treatment of women.

While attending this high-profile event, a man approaches you, he says nothing but he has an odd stare you immediately recognize.

Frequency 102.999999 (Fiddler's Green)

You look at this man further and realize he has a very deep scar running from his forehead to his chin. He is otherwise well-groomed and well-dressed, and is in good company even though he looks nervous. This revelation excites you, you've never had a one-on-one conversation with an older member of the opposite or the same gender before.

A moment later and the scarred man approaches you.

Tune into the frequency and brainstorm for a bit. What do you want to see?

This is a programming question, for your friend a computer guru is essential.

You turn to the man and say "I'm not that good at programming, however, I can brainstorm ideas. Where did you get your scar?"

You get an immediate and somewhat creepy vibe from the man and you answer "A life time ago. A sword cut me in a duel. What kind of things are you interested in?"

I'm interested in the slow burn. The long story. The long way home. Staying where I am. Stories. AI. Networks. Divine help outside the lines. Stories, AI and Networks, these sound more fun.

### The Hero's Journey – Part Two

 

There were no more ships in the sky of Metric.

Everyone had gotten to where they thought they wanted to be, and a storm was approaching. The warning had gone out. At least to those that had the mind and the means to travel. So much so that Nathan thought nobody would travel for a long time. Then he discovered with his own eyes that the people of the village of Elin had had enough time to make the journey. Or, at least the one to his future. And it had turned out to be a very strange and interesting journey all on its own.

Time, as most people learned very early in their time, was not a fixed dimension. It did not flow in a consistent way from one point to another.

That much was in the description to Metric. Here it flowed like Jehovah's dewdrops, going to where it was needed and in the right amount. It didn't taste like flat cakes and honey, but that might have been because of his choice in company. Too many people around him dripped a smell like week old coffee. Nobody went hungry in Metric, because the work ethic ensured that you would find something to eat whether you wanted to or not, but most people didn't go hungry either. They didn't need to worry about it.

He had learned all of that very quickly on the job. He was only there for a week before he understood everything.

Everything, as usual meant ' as much as I need to to get by'. By no means was he an expert, because the rules and laws were always changing. Being a detective was all about being able to adapt to new situations and solve problems, but he had only been at it a little while. People still asked him to help them with crimes he had barely solved himself; or didn't solve at all. It was more a case of people thinking he was a good guess as to who might have done it, than anything else. That didn't bother Nathan, he got the unappealing jobs so people wouldn't know him anyway.

His friend Adi the Adipose had been with him a while now. Needling him into more exotic cases and tougher challenges. Something to break the status quo. Nathan didn't feel like doing that anymore. He felt like he had made his mark by doing what he believed in.

He walked towards the central market of Sampler District with his hands in his pockets as he tried to look casual. The woman he walked past was dressed like a common housewife, but her eyes narrowed as she watched him leave. He wondered what she was thinking, why she was watching him like that.

He was a detective and she could just as likely be his next case, so he struck up a conversation. That looks suspiciously unsuspicious he said waiting carefully to see how the woman would react.

Ianto Break

 

Ianto was annoyed. For people wanting new things for a new system they seemed to be dragging their feet on new ideas. He tried insisting on Missing Piece cards for everyone, but all they wanted was a plain ID badge or a quick costume change. Maybe they were afraid of someone having power over them, or being pigeon holed into some kind of role they weren't interested in. He explained again that wasn't the point of the card. Taking a drink of coffee he calmed the room down.

He showed his Coffee card and the link it had to the Timelock.ca site – Coffee can be used to rise to the occasion or settle a situation down into normalcy but more likely the latter. Good for when pizza takes too long to acclimatize to the situation. Not a substitute for Tea or Jolt which get you to the Next Level.

He said the cards weren't magic, but rather a kind of writers shorthand for where people were in their hero's journey. He said with the general laws of time travel being too specific about what you've seen and done can be counter productive. Especially if they have to get to the same time and place and have an honest reaction to things.

Ianto drew up a set of sample decks for each person in the room. Being a double blind study he could only discuss the one for CC on paper.

CC – Creative Consultant or Cast of Characters – Card has Benedict Cumberbatch on a card saying I invented the position and a link to the Bible scripture about "The Word was with God"

Blue King – Creative and not in opposition to the White King, but not an exact footstep follower in the traditional sense. Scripture "Rich young ruler"

Black Sock – Does not vary wardrobe very often, all other dress duplicates are Time Echos or holograms or AIs – Scripture about "Do not be deceived"

Ironman Watch – Uses not traditional functions of watch for Non Tradional things – Scripture "Times and Seasons"

Blue Box Postcards – Uses the Written word and not a Tardis "Do onto Others" scripture

Yellow Key – Picture of Nathan Fillion with Dectective/Captian/Doctor Time ""Here is a gift for you from the spoil of Jehovah's enemies.""

Jade Lock – Picture of Jade WT saying "His love"

Ianto said the deck was much larger than that, but that was probably sufficient to get people's ideas going. They were given three options for their own customized deck: Action, Connection and Reflection. Each of these types had subcategories for the selection from a much larger list. He showed them briefly and went over the differences.

Ianto said you can mix and match the choices, or even combine two different options together. The key was finding the right fit, since Ianto didn't want them just to pick one option and then be forced into another.

Action had a Red border, Connection had a yellow border and Reflection had a Blue border.

The Subcategories for Action were Self, Hero and Villain, while the subcategories for Connection were Family, Friend and Lover, and for Reflection Community, God and Country.

The cards were all rather stock illustrations, with a small box to note additional information. Ianto also brought out small hand written cards, and talked about the different terms and ideas on those, that could be used to inspire a writing partner.

A rewrite in Pink

 

Juliet Megan sat in the time detention area of the dream time division of the local Time Police. It was early 2010. She played with her red hair with the now infamous streak of pink it in.

The Sargent look at her annoyed, but glad she was alive at the same time. Still the case needed looking into. The CCTV cameras showed her climbing the railing of a bridge, making a phone call and then jumping.

The phone call was to a burner phone but the message was clear “Nobody pays attention to me.” then a string of coordinates that ended in “Acorn”.

The regular police found a girl the next morning brown hair and barely alive. Heavenly observers were called to testify and said they were certain that the girl jumping had red and pink hair and a lot of what they call temporal interference. They say it looked like you jumped off that bridge multiple times.

“What actually happened?” The Sargent said.

Juliet laughed and said “It’s all a bit of a blur inspector.”

She decided to weave a tale about Nathan Fillion freezing time then a more compassionate ‘angel’ swooping in on a bungee cord.

The next time she’s asked she says she was testing out a Sherlock hypothesis and dove into a TARDIS.

Another time she says Doctor Time did a last second substitution and that she’s no longer the girl at the bottom of the bridge and she wants to go to 2014 where the real action is.

Wholock

 

Sherlock strode up to the crime scene with Watson in tow. He took one look at the body and flipped through the purse with the multiple forms of ID cards “Time Traveller” he said. “How?” said Watson. “The ID cards, all set as the same person, so not a forger or a criminal, but a different year on each, all new.” “But that’s impossible” Watson interjected “As impossible as the body vanishing?” says Sherlock. Sure enough they turn around and the crime scene is now empty. “We should leave, now!” the detective shouts. “Why?” “Cleaners”. Sherlock runs to watch from across the street having predicted what comes next.

As if on cue, a number of people with dark suits and blue ties swarm the building, with white flashes of light streaming out the windows on the upper floors. Some frantic movement, then a pressure wave as a very controlled explosion happens in the room where the body was.

Back at the flat, Sherlock and Watson go over the weeks events. They had received a mysterious summons to a building in six days ago with a series of numbers and a note saying $500, but don’t buy a ticket. Sherlock deduced it was a series of picks for a lottery and the instructions not to buy a play hinted at some kind of regulation. Watson dismissed it as chance the first time, but couldn’t argue when it happened again on the next five days for different cities around the world.

They had staked out the building after the third message and found nothing odd about it. The next note said to come only on the day requested and not before and be sure they weren’t followed. Sherlock was visibly shocked. He thought he had been careful enough not to be detected, but obviously they were.

Boimler Time Theatre

 

Having a time machine wasn’t all it was cracked up to to be.

Imagine all the regulations about airlines and then suddenly having the air itself regulated as well. Nature abhors a vacuum, but the stuff that fills the gaps in a standard time machine incursion may as well be empty space. Anything more than the most expert and subtle impression usually caused things to grind to a halt very quickly. Not because of any fault of the system, but rather by design. The human mind could only fill in so much and tampering with the normal flow of time could have a whole raft of knock on effects. So the powers that be choose to have a lurching halt rather than unmitigated chaos.

As a result, most of the public uses of time machines tended to be self contained theatrical productions. These were generally reserved for scientist-artist troops who had their own ways to fill the absence of continuity. These groups often filed the same paperwork using a specialized crew and a very limited number of of outcomes. Usually it involved some well rehearsed number of coincidences and some romantic gesture or chance meeting. One that could be recorded and, when played back, triggered a cascading memory to unfold in anyone arranged to be present at the event. The actual experience of recording tended to be more work than adventure and all but the most die-hard tended to go for the surprise option. Most publicly available time machines had a release valve of sorts that would at least excite the basic functions of people in the landing area to make generic crowd reaction possible. That is, possible without further shunting of resources from Central command.

In the field of archaeology time precise quantum signatures allowed for the reproduction of significant events without the need for actual time travel. The record could be reconstructed around an artifact in a kind of virtual event unfolding, the information being compressed into individual artifacts from their construction.

Any independent time experiments needed to be either self-involved or heavily monitored. Anything that was neither tended to devolve into a weird waking dream where things didn’t flow as they should. This made experiments in unregulated time areas almost impossible.

Sampler District.

 

Detective Time needed a palate cleanser. Enough of baffling cases and paradoxes and impossible time travel. Just a quiet visit to one of the stranger districts in the lesser explored areas of Metric.

He went down to the docks, the robots were offloading another set of dream cubes from the ferries. Something about the water aged the cubes, giving the dreams within them an ancient quality to them. Silly fluffy dreams about the home you grew up in became twinged with nostalgia like fine wine. Wasting time with friends became warm slumbers around a perfect campfire with soul stirring songs and majestic nature surrounding you.

Nathan wondered if he could get a sample of the water to see if it had an effect on anything else. The robots didn’t seem to mind, as long as he didn’t get in the way. He went out to the edge of the pier and found a small bucket to lower down into the mysterious waters. The rope was smooth from use and the container had seen better days. It was typical of Metric. Something you thought was unique was actually quite common, but nobody bothered to spoil the surprise for you. He tasted the water. In an instant he felt his time as a detective and a time pilot and temporal surgeon quantified as a strange and otherworldly flavour. He thought about bottling it, and how it might taste to others.

It was then that the fog cleared and Nathan felt slightly disoriented. He was suddenly on the other side of the body of water, in Metric’s Sampler District. It was cramped and haphazard. Exotic wooden signs for fuels, alcohol, teas and coffees, dyes and candy and soda filled the jumbled streets. One particular sign caught his eye. “Detective Draughts” read the large lettering, and a smaller card in the window had a crude drawing of his sonic pen in it.

He rushed inside and almost demanded to know what was going on, then he remembered how time worked in this area of Metric. Small chance encounters spun around, collected time and blossomed into full products and stores with very little input. A small man behind the counter noticed Nathan’s somewhat flustered appearance and quickly said “With your permission of course. It’s so nice not to have to explain the whole procedure.” Nathan quickly smartened up. He knew that drinking the water on the pier made the experience bear fruit, and it was free for any citizen of Metric to harvest the result and refine it for as many weeks at that would take. It would generally attract the original person quite quickly once the process was finished and they could negotiate on the continued viability of the products.

Nathan quickly apologized for his initial reaction and the storekeeper laughed. “In all my years, you’ve been one of the quickest people to grasp what’s happened here, no surprise either considering.” Nathan swats away the compliment “So, what’s it taste like?” “Oh, it’s quite something” says the storekeeper “I thought of a few different products, but a beer seemed the most appropriate. He hands Nathan a large mug containing the best of the initial batch. “I won’t bore you with the details” he says, “but the water gives a kind of reverse hangover. A sharp pain to start with which mellows out into a pleasant buzz.” It probably wasn’t the most marketable idea, but it suited Nathan’s philosophy – get the rough stuff out of the way first and bask in the resolution.

Nathan was satisfied with the result. It was something he could probably get behind, not too much mind you, but probably a store or two beyond the Sampler District as long as his name wasn’t too associated with it. There was a soft limit on how famous a Detective could get before it started working against them.