Log:Lost Time, Scene 9

Lost Time 2017/03/17 	 Grimm Anastrophe Griffin Ellbeth Ten

9

Here stand the grand buildings of the city constructed during the rapid 19th-Century expansion, on low land reclaimed from long-lost Harrisburg Creek. Main Street is broader here that to the south, though still paved with cobbles, and surrounded on all sides by grandiose edifices (though at any time at least one seems to be under renovation): the heart of this district. Around this are narrower residential streets with a flavor much like that of Old Town, all with faux-gaslamp street lighting.

The heroes had gotten away with two items from the museum, supposedly owned by the Time Pharaoh, AKA Tempus, AKA Dr. Temple. The knife and vase were, in theory, technological, but disguised by magic. That magic ward had been removed. The next step was to try to decipher the technological portion, if they should choose to do so...

Ellbeth looks at the objects, then at the others in the room. "Little known fact. I'm a cyberpath. Next step is for me to see what I can glean from these I guess?"

Ten nods. "Sounds good to me." Since she lacks any useful skills herself in this situation.

Griffin would normally love to hear all about someone being a cyberpath- but something is definitely off with him. His usual eager and cheerful self is no where to be seen. He glances at the objects, then back to the corner where nothing else is in the black room.

He sighs softly as he second guesses himself some more.

Ellbeth holds off for the moment to turn to face Griffin. "What's up with you, Griffin? I.. we... need you focused and with your mind engaged."

Grimm doesn't disguise her surprise, motioning towards the objects with a 'go ahead' nod for Ellbeth. She gives Griffin "a look" after Ellbeth's questions.

The Super Soldier looks surprised when Ellbeth calls him out. He's just glad facing Grimm didn't do worse- he'd never seen a face like that... such rage... such mind-bending power hidden beneath that dark garb.

Goosebumps run down his arm as he turns to Ellbeth as he remembers "what's wrong".

His head sags and he shakes his head.

"I... I wish I could say. I messed up- bad today. Put us all in this situation." He says after a long pause. "I let my powers get the better of me- I got overconfident and reckless. Perhaps too much is on the line for someone like me to be on the team..."

Considering his training & background, loss isn't really an option but this is beyond that. This is... supernatural. The man before you all almost seems broken & afraid despite possibly.

Ten frowns. "What is supernatural? Did I miss something?"

Ellbeth asks, "How did you mess up? What happened?" She doesn't sound accusing.

Grimm keeps fixing Griffin with that look. "Well if you're not going to tell them what you really did, I will." She looks pointedly at Ellbeth. "He was mentally connected with that dog of his when it sprung the attack that started the fight at the museum. And then his dog mentally manipulated Inferno, which triggered her burning everything. I still haven't finished questioning Griffin on whether he mentally commanded his dog to do that, too. Then top that off with abandoning orders to protect his dog rather than staying on mission." She drums her fingers quietly on the table. To Griffin, it may seem thunderous after her stern little aside with him after the Museum debacle before they headed to Egypt.

"I gave Wolf the ok to try that stunt on their time travel device which set off all this mess." Griffin says woefully. "I put that whole Museum and everything and everyone inside in danger. No telling what would have happened if Inferno would have kept going the way she was- infuriated and unchained.

Thing is... I wasn't any better."

The lights in the room flicker as his emotions get the better of him and a slight surge of energy expands out from around him.

Suddenly he looks up. "Dog of mine?! That 'Dog' is a person- regardless of whatever body he has. He's free to act however he wishes- the only thing I signed off on was the opening act." He flinches as her fingers drum on the table.

"I didn't know about him triggering Inferno to go nuclear. But... Grimm's right. It was probably my fault too." His shoulders sag and he looks away. ANy spine he might have shown was ended when Grimm decided to 'speak for him' and say what he 'really did'.

"Well, your 'free person's judgement is in question, in my mind," Gabrielle fixes Griffin with a deathly gaze. "Right along with yours when you ignored my call to roll out to aid Ellbeth when she was stuck alone with the Time Pharaoh. Which made me have to go without backup to provide a distraction." She just shakes her head and looks back to Ellbeth. "Speaking of staying on mission...let us know what you find with the items," she says as her features smooth away to a more placid expression.

Ellbeth glances at Grimm. Then looks back at Griffin. "Given what you knew /at the time/ do you think your decision was incorrect? Unless we backed down, or Dr Temple was willing to leave without the items we have here there was going to be conflict in any case. You made a judgement call, Griffin. Maybe it was right. Maybe it was wrong. But that's something people like us have to make frequently. We're metas, mages, whatever. We're not gods. We're not perfect. Make the call, learn from it /if/ it was wrong, and don't beat yourself up afterwards. Nobody is dead, right?"

Ten considers stepping into the argument, but really she has not enough clue what happened, since no one has bothered to fill her in on events. But it sounds like Ellbeth is trying to calm things down as she would, anyway.

Some of Ellbeth's words seem to hit home. Griffin even admits in a low tone, "No... no one died."

Some of the doubt in his mind is cleared but he knows that Grimm was still right- he fell off mission to protect Wolf. But being a 'superhero' is nothing like being in the military. Even on his worst day he wasn't standing next to an animal as a woman covered in fire tries to burn it alive.

He hopes he's never stuck with such a choice again. He prays he never has to make a call like that again- its a soft spot he's known about but never expected to have such consequences.

"You're both right. I made the wrong call, and let things get out of control because I was overconfident." He looks to each person at the table before he says, "It won't happen again."

Ellbeth smiles, "I've said that myself a few times. Okay. I'm going to start by melding with the dagger's tech internals. Wish me luck."

Ten crosses her fingers for Ellbeth: wishing luck aloud might disrupt her concentration.

Griffin nods as Ellbeth gets back to work. He's a little embarassed he required a team wide pep talk, but feels better for it. He certainly sems more attentive- though his gaze never finds its way back to Grimm after saying he wouldn't repeat the same mistake again.

Ellbeth's eyes widen. "This is... well, far ahead of current tech levels. This," she taps the dagger with a finger, "is a decryption device for the data in another item. Hopefully the vase. I... well... not sure how much I can retrieve. This is advanced stuff."

Griffin may never know what he missed of Grimm's reaction to his statements. And now, Gabrielle's paying attention to Ellbeth's results. "So he grabbed future tech and hid it in the ancient past." She scratches her chin as she tries to figure out Time Pharoah's game here.

'No better place to hide something hi-tech. NO way our ancestors could have figured it out... especially if we can't." Griffin says as he listens in.

The connection with the dagger allows for 'unlocking' the data contained in the vase, but the amount of data is vast. Thousands of times larger than anything its size today. If not more. There are recordings of historical events, weather patterns, geological shifts, famous people, etc, etc. It's basically a giant library of information over the last several thousand years. And stored in such a way as to make it difficult to sift through.

Ellbeth gasps as the extent of the stored data becomes evident. "It's historical data. A treasure trove. events, weather, geological shifts, famous people, etc, etc. Including future dates. All jumbled up. It will take Max and I hundreds of hours at a minimum to make any real sense from this." she reports.

Ten says, "Just what a time traveler needs! Though it does raise the question, is the history contained in the vase the same as history as we know it? Or does it represent another time stream, of how history ought be be, or... I'd better stop before my head starts hurting. I'm not immune to *that* sort of headache."

"So he's got a high tech version of the almanac," Gabrielle murmurs, referencing a movie, of course. "And it's important enough to him that he needed a whole villain team to fetch it." Her brow furrows. "The weather and geological info has me stumped." Really, Grimm? That's ALL that has you stumped?

Ellbeth shakes her head, "I don't know. The data is jumbled up so badly finding out if there are any differences will take time. It's... like a jigsaw puzzle. One topic is chopped up into hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of separate pieces."

Ellbeth frowns as she detects an addition data item being added. "It's still active. The vase is still collecting data."

Ten says, "Oh! Not a library but a recording device!"

Ten says, "Now *that* explains why you'd leave it in the past and collect it much later. And the need for a disguise."

"So where's it collecting from?" Grimm asks as she sits up a bit more attentively. "Like...-how-, even," she looks over at the vase. "Guess we're part of its collection now, too..."

Ten says, "Hm. In fact, if the time line divides, like it does in some theories, this would potentially give you recordings of whatever time line you're in at the point you collect it, so long as it split off after the time you placed the vase."

Ellbeth looks up from the items. "This is a unbelievable, incredible, priceless treasure trove of data. Any historian would sell her soul to possess this. But I still have no idea why Dr Temple wants it so badly."

Ten says, "You need a good record of history to know best how to meddle with it? Or maybe to track changes that meddling has made?"

"Ten has a point," Grimm rubs the back of her head. "Drop off the device in the far past. Time jump forward and collect it and it's recordings. Now you have a road map of where to go all points in between."

Ellbeth nods, "Sounds like the most likely reason voiced so far." she agrees.

Griffin simply nods his agreement.

Ellbeth says, "I'm kind of surprised these haven't just vanished. Dr Temple is a time traveler, correct? He knows these were in the museum yesterday. And I know I at lease was not. So why haven't he just gone back a day to take them before we got involved? Anyone getting a headache trying to figure all this time stuff out?""

Ten shrugs. "It depends on the model of time travel that holds true, I suppose. There's that whole crossing your own timeline excuse - if you aren't thwarted stealing it then why would you have gone back to have stolen it earlier, sort of thing. But that may or may not be silly, depending on how it actually works."

Gabrielle rests her elbows on the table as she rests her head in her hands to think. "And what does this have to do with the timeline being all 'fuzzy' for the Cartesian?"

Griffin shrugs again. All he knows about time travel is his own one-way trip to the future and that which he learned from ancient sci-fi.

Ten says, "And the strangeness that the fuzziness extends forwards and backwards?"

Ellbeth pushes the two items away from her back into the centre of the table. "I have no idea at all. I also have no idea what we ought to do with those. I'm open to suggestions. Or handing this whole situation on to anyone who wants to take responsibility for it."

Ten says, "I wonder if the fuzziness has in any way been altered by the events at the museum."

"Or caused by it... since this is time travel after all. Things don't necessarily have to come in order- well from our perspective anyway." Griffin adds. "I feel like whatever it is is looking us square int he face."

Ten says, "One thought - we may well have here a record of Temple's past appearances! Perhaps analyzing those will tell us something!"

Ten says, "Assuming anyone has the computing power."

Ellbeth nods, "Probably. I have a extreme state of the art system. Given time I expect I could extract this data and correlate it."

"Sounds like the beginnings of a good plan." Griffin says, "So do we need to move this party back to Vee-A (Colonial Bay, VA of course)? Won't Temple be expecting that?"

Ellbeth nods, "Yes. He probably will. And he seems able to detect where the items were until I cast a privacy spell. Which I cannot maintain indefinitely." she says.

Ten says, "Hm. Can we take it somewhere he won't expect? Like Undermoon maybe?"

"Can you keep them up long enough for us to... maybe, fortify the location you need to be at to do your work?" Griffin asks, looking up to Ten, then to Grimm. "Perhaps we can set up some defenses and layer ourselves so as to provide cover -slash- protection for you. If you can work under the type of distraction that would likely cause of course."

He raises an eyebrow at Ellbeth.

Ellbeth grins, "That would be one solution. Exposure to the mana background of Undermoon will wipe the data store clear in a day or two." she says.

Ten says, "Oh. I wish we could be sure that's a good thing,"

"Can you keep them up long enough for us to... maybe, fortify the location you need to be at to do your work?" Griffin asks, looking up to Ten, then to Grimm. "Perhaps we- Cartesian and anyone else who can and will stand with us, can set up some defenses and layer ourselves so as to provide cover -slash- protection for you. If you can work under the type of distraction & pressure that would likely cause of course. It certainly won't be easy."

He raises an eyebrow at Ellbeth before sitting back in his chair. He wishes it were the type that spun. .o0(Well there's a thought. Wipe it out- end it all.)

"Back to the Undermoon play- What's wrong with ending it all right then and there? If he can't access the data his plan is over with right? Or is there some kind of 4th dimensional clause I'm missing? Why aren't we sure that's a good thing?" He asks, looking to Ten & Ellbeth pointedly.

Ten says, "That maybe his plan isn't all bad. What if he happens to be trying to fix something he's already messed up, for instance? Without knowing what his plan is, can we be sure we want to thwart it?"

Ellbeth nudges the vase with a finger, "We can probably erase the data or even destroy the container here and now. I've been wondering the same thing. Would it be a good idea?"

"Good points, Ten." Griffin says, "So we'll move that play to the last resorts pile?" He chuckles. "Ok- so let's turn to the 'Man of the Hour', What do we know about him that we can use to our advantage? Is there any place he cannot easily get to that we can move your operation to?" He asks as he puts his hands on the table and interlaces his fingers.

Ten says, "I still think we might have out best source of knowledge about him right in front of us. If we can access it."

Ellbeth says rather reluctantly, "We could set up a secure position, and I'll try to decrypt and assemble into a useable form the data while you, and any other heroes we can co-opt try to stop Dr Temple taking it back? I mean, legally, it probably /is/ his property."

Ten says, "Or maybe he stole it from the future - who knows?"

"I think a couple thousand years of leaving it out in the open makes it a matter of possession." Griffins says certainly.

Ten nods to Ellbeth. "I think it's the best thing to try. If we can't piece together Temple's timeline adequately, we're in the dark."

"I think its a workable plan- considering the kind of information on the line, its definitely worth trying to preserve and decrypt." Griffin agrees, seeming more his old self now that they have made some progress.

Ellbeth frowns. "Uh, who was the third President?" she asks the Americans in the room.

"Thomas Jefferson." Griffin answers immediately, and simply as if he has them memorized or something.

National Pride people- oh and being a time lost super-soldier.

Ellbeth says, "In this data it's down as someone called Patrick Henry."

Ten says, "That is *not* good. So this is from a different timeline? But then... hm - it's still recording? What does that mean? Is it recording a different world? Has it been changed since the recording was made? What?"

Griffin's head snaps at that news. "Seriously? What..." But Ten asks every question he has but one. "Does this mean our timeline has been altered and that could be a record of the original one? or ... God. I don't even know. We need a physicist." He says sighing.