Doctor Nathan

 

Nathan had been called a “technical adviser on time travel” by the girl, still orbiting the Lighthouse. He didn’t remember suggesting that, so it must have come up some time after he had finished this loop. She reached out across loops, and derailed these ones. This usually happened when Jade interrupted him at the University, and usually meant another split version of himself that would take a different path through the next few jumps. He’d have to draw on different abilities for the next little while, so he wouldn’t orbit around his time doppelganger and have to merge with the usual confusion and downtime.

As it was his forth loop through and she no doubt did it to all the loops she was working on. He’d have to act fast to merge the other three versions with himself to prevent them running around.

He ran to the Quadruple Lightning, it had already realized what was happening and iOi was ready to meet him. /Whir-Tick-Whir/ it warned. The other versions of himself had already beaten him to the time ship. He’d wake up once they had done the Doctor Time Merge.

-Blackness-

Nathan stood in the Time Operation wing of the Dream Hospital. The girl, or this version of her, was trying to deal with too many conflicting memories of the rescue. He preferred doing this kind of operation while in his Timeship, and by moving the events around. Metric experts said that kind of heavy pruning caused more problems than it solved. But somewhere in his mind was the memory of trying it.

The Dream Fog already given each of the four different versions of himself roots that ended up here anyway, as the feedback thrust him into a loop around the hospital. Not the best meta-solving but not the worst either.

At least that’s what he figured happened. He was having his own conflicting memories too, as the staff had him both patient and visiting Time Surgeon. In his haste to merge his loop interrupted selves he must have grabbed the one that initiated the conversation as well.

“You’ll have to operate on yourself too” said the Time Nurse as she saw his hesitation.

“Really, where am I?” Nathan asked. “Next room over” said the Nurse, with the kind of detachment that suggested that this was a common occurrence.

Nathan walks over to the other room and sees himself. He waves and the other waves back.

“And you are?” asks the sitting one. “The one that thought he could solve it now.” “I see” said the sitting version. “Your chart says you are from the Stanley Apartment. It says there was an incident when you gave all your Time points to Benedict and I was trying to Doctor Time”

Time Nurse Jade appears from a Time Window. She says that this version of Nathan has to have his University memories removed to balance the situation. You can graft them to the girl to help her stabilize.

It seemed like a tidy solution. Maybe a little too clean. The girl had already acclimatized to Metric and University memories might break that process up. He also didn’t know of a ‘Time Nurse’ Jade and just as likely that was the crux of the problem. With one set of his memories gone, she’d have the room to get one of her versions to go back and take some Time Surgery courses. Or it might be a ploy suggested by the other Nathan after a Time Edit. The specifics didn’t matter. Well they did, but it was up to the others at the moment. Local coherence in the hospital was important enough not to upset the apple cart. Arguing over minutia with logical inconsistencies was a first year Time University habit that everyone was quick to break.

The card system in Metric seemed to help with that. She had her Nurse credentials, somehow, and they were verified by local authorities. That meant that they were on the hook for any spinoff effects, bad or good. As always, Nathan had enough Time Sense to know not to look a gift horse in the mouth. It worked enough, and that was all that mattered.

Nathan was used to starting fresh, as long as he had something to work with he would be fine. He’d have yet another version of himself around to chat with that thought differently. Jade wondered if there was any precedent for that in Metric.

The nurses had a case history to study after a short cut. It was the way time moved in time neutral areas. You stayed in a certain scene until you needed something from outside the immediate vicinity. Once you’re finished you moved past a cut line and got the next scene. It was like a live movie. A little too much like it. He wondered how much the Narrative Fields were working overtime here.

“I’m afraid you won’t have much of your Time Sense left” said Surgeon Time. The working Nathan had got a new Name Badge between cuts. “It’ll recover” said the Patient. “No, it won’t. You’ll need a new gimmick. The scene felt forced, and a bit campy, but it was obvious the local AI had something in mind.

Patient Nathan jumped up and ran a path around the hospital, tripping as many ‘cut’ lines as he could.

The farther he got, the less he saw. People stopped reacting to him and slowly crew and cameras became visible. A few more cut lines and he heard a voice on the speaker. It was the Narrator from the Stanley Apartment. “I’m afraid that’s as far as the story goes now. You’ll have to turn around now.”

Nathan had a short conversation with the Narrator, and waited for the cameras to catch up.

He turned around to look at them, but they were still a few cut lines away. The Narrator explained that the AIs had changed the layout of the hospital so he could just see the cameras at critical times, and when he focused. It would let him monologue out of time loops and into certain time effects, as the action cards would be more obvious to the Game Time monitors. He’d have to get used to in the hospital, the goal would be getting it to work anywhere in Metric.

As if on cue, iOi came up to him and gave him a new sonic. This time it was more microphone and conductor’s baton. /Whir-Whir-Sprong/ said the robot. He got the gist of it. At least in Metric he’d still have his Time Ship, but it would be controlled by iOi and voice commands rather than piloted directly. A lot of his skills would simply transfer like that so he could still do what he did before but without the technical theory and rote learning.

Jade sent a quick message “Have Surgeon Time graft it into Captain Time, University Exit.” In the jumble of thoughts that made up Nathan, that made sense, and was a memory he could latch onto. Metric had levelled up his Detective skills, so was only fitting that it should hone his Adventure and Doctoring skills too.

He made a short detour to makeup to come up with a fun story to tell his surgeon self. The Narrator told him the Narrative Fields and Dream Fog in the hospital would fill in the blanks. The time clone growing out of the back of his head looked horribly fake, but that would be great for the blooper reels.

The Time Surgeon would stay at the Dream Hospital and be this area’s equivalent of Professor Time, but with more practical work. He felt like he could still be Detective Time and Doctor Time even if he had to rely more on his friends and his ship to do the real work. This way, he’d be free to do more with the plot rather than fuss over the calculations.

To leave Metric with his TimeShip he’d have to re-certify his Time Pilot license or at least prove he knew enough of the lingo to instruct iOi or the ship to do complex actions on his behalf. Till then, Metric would be a Live Action Role Play driving school.

He wondered if this would be a better format for most people than doing the Time University route. He’d have to talk it over with Jade(s).