Detective Time - Jades Journey

 

It had been a few cycles since they had finished the first run of the previews. What that meant in terms of time depended a lot on what section of Metric you were in. Some areas had the idea back propagate a few weeks or months, so there was a mountain of feedback to sort through already. Officially one couldn’t release derivative works until the original release time had passed, but there was a lot of preparation behind the scenes.

Professor Time, the version of Nathan that stayed at the Time University, got one of the most back dated copies, and had plenty of time to go over the logistics and feasibility of the Time Doctoring the situation would need. Jade scheduled a time for Detective Time to chat with Professor, and pick up files for Captain Time and Doctor Time versions of himself to open when the variables called for it.

Switching between the three modes of his current self could be disorienting without the proper transition protocols. In particular, reorganizing his thoughts with new information took less time if it was explained with the proper persona in mind.

Doctor Zapp had been instrumental in parsing out the various logic directions that each version of Nathan would need to understand the problem. Their relationship was still sometimes rocky, Zapp still not past the choice of his linear integration vs Nathan’s more chaotic shifts. He found he could understand each of Nathan’s current travelling selves, but not comprehend how they couldn’t follow each other’s logic.

Jade had fractal integration of her various selves and she could understand the situation Nathan was in. She felt different in each body, and thought some parts of her mind were faster or slower depending on how she specialized. For him, it was likely that some ideas and habits were locked out or nearly dormant.

She had seen some of the scans he had taken while in Doctor Time mode, and that seemed to be the indication. Jade was happy for the variety and his novel approaches to the various problems they ran across.

It did mean that he was always a little out of harmony with people though, and hard to work into a pattern. She remembered the trouble of the Time University days and how his input would often overbalance whatever task they were working on.

Often, like now, and in the Media Room, it was better to have Nathan work at arm’s length and not upset the fine tuning that Jade was so good at.

She got onto a private comms channel and bounced around her various selves, letting one talk but being focused into different listeners to keep everyone on the same page. It was something she rarely did, preferring to work independently so they wouldn’t overlap efforts. After a few switches though, it became obvious that each self was working on a different scope and goal, which made her relax a bit.

This wasn’t directly Time University business, Metric was outside of their Time Environment, but it seemed like this place could use the help. It was being patrolled erratically by the Time Police though, and one of her selves was a liaison with them.

Jade felt like the University and Metric were related somehow, apart from the presence of her, Nathan, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She would have to rework her comms setup as Metric time flowed without the underlying rigidness of Zapp’s order. Her panel usually used simple geometric pieces for everyone, and here attached ‘islands’ of influence seemed more appropriate.

The local game of Missing Piece might be more useful that shapes too, keeping track of things with time counters, rather than logical gates with mechanical rules.

It would be a nice vacation from her normal job, but not without work. “Zapp would hate it here” she thought with a laugh as her background scans picked up anomaly after anomaly. She had some quick contact with an alternate version of herself investigating such a possible problem. She was monitoring Nathan at a garment factory that used more time windows per shift than she had all of last year.

However, rather than explode the problem, it actually tamed it. The jacket in question made it easier to track the girl and her various probable vectors of egress from the paradox.

It seemed that a paradox in Matrix was more of a bad storm than a world ending problem.

Her experience with communications proved handy as it was relatively easy to find the location of the majority of the chatter about the previews. Nathan had his own map of this area of Metric, but short of riding his Timeship, there was no way that his directions were any help. Instead she had traced out the locations based on signal traffic, which followed the same general principals as her Time Gates.

The headers for the chatting said it was in the Blue District, more specifically the Blue Duck Inn and the Actor’s Guild. Jade took a Time Window there and found a good spot to survey what was happening before she made her presence known.

With the general area being so close to the Dream Docks, she didn’t need to worry. As the fog rolled into the area, a half a dozen dream doppelgangers appeared around her. Wary but not sensing any direct danger, she scanned them, and they faded out as their non-physical nature was laid bare.

A small shift in the wind, and they reappeared. This time she did her best to just ignore them. It seemed that most people in the area ignored them as well, except for small children who asked the duplicates about bits of the previews.

Whatever the fog things were, they seemed to have a rudimentary understanding of language and plot. One that quickly fell back into nonsense, but it still amused young minds. It seemed that even without Jade’s direct presence, the previews had entered the area’s subconscious.

Only when the fog lifted and the real Jade was still there did anyone older even acknowledge her. Apologizing for the late welcome, she was quickly escorted to the Director’s Bridge. As she walked with the area’s greeter, they explained the division of labour in the area.

People were generally classed as Actors or Directors – though both definitions were broader as all creative types were one or the other. Director of Words was the Writer. Director of Plot was the Narrator and Actors were anyone or anything that appeared in the final product human, robot or even location. Most of the Actors currently in the area were from another realm that had started sending people to Metric via Dream dumps. They were getting a bit disoriented from the strangely flowing time, but the Dream Fog seemed to help.

Since time wasn’t overly linear anywhere in this area of Metric, there was a lot of overlapping of duties, with everyone working to make sense of happenings, and keeping momentum going. The previews marked a kind of new order to the area, as would any project, and people were eager to get things moving. It seemed like the newcomers might have been brought in by the girl, but that was just a wild idea at the moment.

Arriving at a small bridge just outside of the medieval town, Jade looked around and didn’t see anyone. She thought she might have been pranked as the greeter walked away, but a teleport request appeared on her watch. She agreed, ready to undo it if necessary, but that was just a paranoid reflex.

Appearing moments later on the bridge of a starship, she did a quick scan and relaxed again. “A little jumpy?” asked a voice. Jade ignored the question and scanned again. The person wasn’t here, or rather they were, but a few seconds out of sync. Jade opened a Time Window and walked through it. She scanned again when she found nothing. “A little jumpy?” she asked herself out loud, stumbling right into the paradox.

A wave of fear crept into her mind as she realized the trap. Then “Surprise!” as confetti appeared and people shouted greetings at her as they faded into her time perception. One of them had a microphone and what looked like Nathan’s 7D Narration setup.

That explained her slightly off reactions and general sense of being pranked. Knowing it was there, she sent out the counter signal and cut short getting steared into anything else. The host seemed a little deflated, but also a little glad he didn’t have to run the gag any further. “Sorry about that, but we have to make sure you can handle yourself in a Time Emergency. Even with the Narration field limiting your choices you still stayed pretty calm and didn’t worsen the problem.”

The screen on the bridge came to life and showed the full temporal scan of the area, and her, her other selves, Nathan, and the paradoxes they had seen. The previews that showed up at regular intervals seemed to shape the timescape as well, as people knew who was causing what and that it was being managed.

As the mental shaping from the Narration field dissipated, the display and the workstations became strangely familiar, as her mind drew parallels between this setup and her own.

“Before we go any farther, we should probably check your cards” said a short robot with the name ‘Arlo’ shown across his chest as a kind of word-logo. Jade agreed, despite the fact they were all listed in her public profile. She felt like it was asking for more than just permission to browse them.

She had made her set in the Media Room, using a tutorial template, but it warned her that it was only the first part of having a verified deck. The ships internal scanners, and the robot’s own observations had qualified her gear and basic abilities to Bronze level foil. She let them access her University files to give her Unique and transferable Skills and Bonuses.

The robot said she could take a detour to the gaming room to round out her deck, or man a station to earn Metric qualifications that way. The rest of the crew, looking over her cards suggested she do both. As the robot finished they talked about how her selves could divide up the Missing Piece deck to maximize it’s functionality.