Log:Time Bubble Crisis

2019/12/12 Copycat|Arthur 1

You know what the problem is with time travel?

There's all kinds of wibbly-wobbly stuff when the subjective timeline and objective timeline interact. It often makes these weird, timey-wimey bubbles that need a careful, steady hand to prune out of an otherwise healthy timeline. Here we are with Professor Aevus floating along just outside of the normal local timestream when he (she?) comes upon a bubble swelling out of the timeline.

It's not yet an alternate timeline. It's not yet a fully birthed new universe.

It is not quite anything yet, but it is already so much of everything.

It is already fully formed. It is already well-defined. It is already a threat to its parent timeline. It is already a cancer upon the universe.

Professor Aevus is unaccredited, just as Doctor Aevus is unlicensed. But people listen when uses those titles. Arthur Aevus, the experimental fusion of Spirit and Porter, is an Experience. One that Kat has settled into nicely. Spirit's evenhandedness and calm, Porter's humbleness, kindness, and "seen it all" attitude, have coalesced into a stable, confident personality to offset Kat's nervous nature. And yet, she's still retained a sense of her self. Neither of the personalities are trying to take over or drown her out. So polite of them! Or maybe they're just understanding as they boost Kat up.

Right now, if Copycat was the one to see the time bubble, she might be on the verge of panic. Arthur Aevus, on the other hand, is more curious than anything else. Not a lick of anxiety as he floats along.

In the time void adrift, he floats in a slow rotation, approaching the swollen bubble as he starts to float upside down with his hands in his overcoat's pockets. He drifts closer to inspect it, thinking. o O (That should have flattened out or spawned a new timeline by now. Something is very, very wrong.)

The bubble wobbles unsettlingly in the timeless, spaceless infinity. It waits for something to happen. Bobbing in front of Arthur Aevus is a bubble of raw temporal possibility. Potential made material.

Arthur studies the bubble as he slips his hands out of his pockets, looking down at his temporal watch and making adjustments. The Torus provides an intuitive interface that's linked with Arthur's mind. Or minds. . o O (Well, let's take a look inside at this event that's causing this...). He smacks his hand down on his watch, activating it to take him there.

Arthur Aevus appears inside of the time bubble. It looks even more like a bubble inside of it than it did on the outside.

Overhead, the sky has a filmy grey appearance to it that shades into a strange, faded out rainbow quality as it nears the horizon. Which horizon? Every horizon. Stars are distantly visible in the central grey spot, winking into existence as this birthing timeline slowly unfolds into existence from its parent dimension.

Arthur finds himself on the steps of the Science Building at CBSU's main campus. Prismatic beams radiate out of the windows of an upper level room - physics, one might well assume - painting the horizons with brilliant, ever-changing light that is not reflected by the pale, washed out colors stretching across the bubble's film. Every so often, as Arthur surveys his surroundings, people will spontaneously *POP* into existence. Students, professors, and random other passersby simply wink into being and carry on with a life that they seem to have been living before they ever even existed.

Arthur stares in amazement as he witnesses first hand the birthing of a new timeline. It'd be a beauty to witness if it wasn't still attached and threatening its parent timeline.

There's no time to stand back and witness this. He has to do something! And the prismatic rays coming out of the science building look like a good place to start, so he starts running that way.

It takes perhaps a minute for Arthur to climb the stairs outside of the building. He presses inside of the building through the doors and looks to the list of floors of the building. One assumes that Arthur can eliminate any floor between 20 and infinity.

No doubt it helps that every floor above 19 is written in wingdings. The infinity symbol is artfully crafted in gold and platinum threads interwoven in a weird pattern that makes it shimmer purple at certain angles.

The experimental physics department has labs on floor 15.

Arthur reads the floor listings in passing, then suddenly reverse-steps back to admire it a bit more. "Hahah, well. That's cute and...trouble! Okay, onward!" Intrigued as he is, he marches on to the experimental lab on the 15th floor.

Labs. There are multiple experimental labs on the 15th floor. Arthur may have to wonder if there are this many in the original timeline.

Fortunately there's plenty of elevators to carry our hero upward and onward. The elevator muzak sounds like a weird mix of Mozart and trap music, but with a distantly familiar funky beat. It takes an indeterminate amount of time for the elevator to open its doors again and disgorge Dr. Aevus into hallway that spirals outward and forward, the floors and walls glowing an unsettling rose-gold color that doesn't match the white-blue pseudo-fluorescent light radiating from the overhead track LEDs that twists around and around into the distance.

Prismatic beams stream across the vortex-like hallway in which Arthur finds himself. At first, the beams don't seem to follow any sort of pattern. It may require some advancement for Arthur to better understand the non-Euclidean space in which he finds himself.

This must be the place, Arthur thinks as he's ejected from the elevator. He must've missed a lot by having to skip a college experience, he decides as he starts walking down the bizarre hallway, trying to keep focused on following these disorganized prismatic beams.

Arthur advances down the hallway.

In spite of the objective appearance of the hallway, Arthur finds himself moving down a level hallway with a constant sense of gravity. Non-Euclidean spaces are just weird. He advances until he's a good hundred feet into the floor, where he becomes able to understand some of the patterns of prismatic beams around him.

Lights lance around Arthur at frequent intervals. Taking a few minutes to study, Arthur thinks he has identified the correct sequence of hallways to traverse to track the prismatic beams to their source. It all starts by taking a left out of the hallway in pursuit of a yellow beam.

"Is anyone even up here?" Arthur asks aloud, coming across the potential pattern. To find the pattern's path, he may very well have to walk in a non-Euclidean manner while following the yellow beam. "Well, onwards!"

Arthur can hear his voice echoing about the space from all sorts of erratic, disorienting angles. Definitely non-Euclidean in spite of how it looks when you're inside of it.

Following the yellow beam leads Arthur down what appears to be a straight hallway. At a certain point Arthur gets the impression that the hallway is curving to the right despite the beam seeming to continue onward.

Promptly Arthur pops out into the main hallway again and takes a few seconds to re-orient himself. Past the windows and second doorway to the right, onward toward daylight. Arthur crosses along the hallway until he can start following a blue-green beam of light down the next hallway.

"When I find out whoever or whatever managed to make such a mess of time..." Arthur utters to himself as he begins pursuing the blue-green beam.