trans_9 | (no subject)

Not gonna ask, don't want to know.

"You coming or what?" He asked the woman before he started to walk along the lit up path.

Once the man--Lacaille had mentally dubbed him "Mirzam"-- had started going on about this "Company" of his, she'd tried once or twice to speak up and tell him that this probably wasn't what he thought it was. Once he'd started threatening violence, she'd quietly moved off a bit to examine the chrysalis mechanism she'd emerged from, figuring she'd let him and the... intelligence they were communicating with work things out.

That wasn't to say she hadn't been paying attention (all right, she hadn't, mostly, though the intelligence was hard to ignore), but she'd ended up so absorbed in her examination that she jumped a bit when Mirzam called over to her. "Oh, sorry," she said, having the grace to sound a little sheepish. She rose from the crouching position she'd settled into and headed over towards him... then proceeded to get sidetracked by the path. "Are those bioluminescent?"

"Maybe? Right now I just care that they work, and we're getting some clothing." He'll reconsider it once he learns what kind it is, but for now he just didn't want to be coated in slime and naked.

He stumbled a little as they walked, the sedative slowing his normal fast strides.

"Clothing. Right." It didn't sound like it was all that much of a concern for her, but she followed along anyway--it wasn't as if she had anywhere else to go, and... oh, right, there was that whole taboo thing.

She picked up her pace a little to catch up with him, stumbling once or twice herself; she'd been neglecting her exercises lately, and it'd been a while since she'd last done any walking. "So, where are you from? And what's that company you were asking about?"

"Originally? New York, but last place I was in Odessa Texas before waking up here. The Company, they've kidnapped people before and held them. This looks pretty advanced to be one of their facilities though." Unless somebody has the ability to create organic ships.

"New York? That sounds kind of familiar..." She scans through her mental database, and it takes her a few seconds to come up with a match. "You mean you're from Earth?" She seems inordinately excited by this revelation, and goes right back to asking questions. "What's it like out there? Martel used to tell stories about his trips down there, but it was all just politics and economics and nothing about the biosphere or anything really interesting. I mean, I've read about it a little, of course, but that's not the same as hearing it from someone who lives there."

He was still walking along, but Nathan glanced back at her with clear surprise.

"Of course I'm from Earth, where else would I be from? Where the hell are you from?"

Now it was Lacaille's turn to be surprised, and the jar to her thought processes made her stumble a bit again. "Me? I'm space-born, so I'm not technically a citizen of anywhere, but the Messier's usually out in the Kuiper belt, so I guess you could say I'm 'from' there."

She tilted her head slightly and gave him a curious look. "You don't know about the rest of colonized space? I didn't think Earth was that isolated. Unless... but that's--not impossible, I guess, but not likely..." She trailed off, but she was starting to put two and two together.

Space-born? What the hell? She claiming to be an alien. No, mentioned something about colonies.

He shook his head, "We got some satellites and probes and the International Space Station in orbit right now. And that Hubble telescope, that's all. What's not likely?"

"Hubble? That was launched back in the Common Era, in 1990, and decommed in 2014 when they launched the Webb..."

She fell silent for a moment, pondering the implications of this. "I think... I think that one or both of us may have traveled in time. Liu and Virtanen disproved the possibility of closed timelike curves in 142, so we'd have been moved forward, possibly via travel at relativistic speeds. Or we may have been put into suspended animation, which would explain the purpose of the pods, but neither theory explains how we got here in the first place..."

More blinking, "Wait, time travel? Like Hiro? It was 2007 where I was. March 20th. You're saying we're in the what distant future now?"

"It was January 2, Aevum Astrorum 342 when I was--that corresponds to Common Era 2541--but I haven't seen any solid evidence about when we are now. All this is more advanced than anything I've ever seen, so--"

Right about then, another penny dropped. "You have time travel capabilities in your time?"

Right... years that went right over his head. Least until she mentioned 2541....that part he got, and jesus... way, way after his time or anybody else's from his world. Well except for maybe Adam if Hiro didn't get rid of him and his own daughter, Claire possibly. Maybe even Peter. They might still be around.

He nodded, "Yeah, sort of. I know a guy who can."

That revelation actually left her at a momentary loss for words, joining the likes of Eta Carinae and Bach's B Minor Mass in the rarefied ranks of "things that could shut Lacaille up".

It didn't last too long, though, and the questions came back in full force again. "It's just one person? How does he do it? Have the mechanics been studied? Something like that should've completely ruined the current models of space-time--there's no way it could've been lost, and there aren't any records... Wait--maybe the multiversal theorists were right?"

By this point, she was mostly rambling to herself; her mind was racing enough that she'd entirely forgotten there was someone else there.

Prepare for more mind blowing then, Lacaille!

He shrugged, "He just can. Says he can bend time and space with his ability. Not sure how, other than he can do that, and I can... well I fly."

"Fly?"

All this should have been patently impossible. Even the rumored psychics in her world didn't report abilities that broke every known law of physics, and probably a few of the unknown ones besides.

But "impossible" was not in Lacaille's vocabulary (although, admittedly, "vastly improbable to the point where multiple-worlds theory and multiversal travel is more likely than both these phenomena and a complete coverup of their existence" was).

"How does it work? Physiological alterations? Psychokinesis? Is it learned, inherent, induced?" A beat. "Can you show me?"

He still felt a little groggy, but some of it had faded a little.

"It's genetic, but other than that, I have no idea how. I just can."

Nathan then started to rise into the air, clearly relieved he still could with the look on his face. He tilted forward as he flew into the Clothing Room.

"Genetic? Then is it subject to--"

And then he was flying, and Lacaille couldn't help but stare, feeling like she was witnessing the most significant discovery of the last few hundred years.

She was right. And if she could somehow just prove she was right, it would be utterly revolutionary. She couldn't even begin to imagine what could be done with this knowledge.

Where he was flying to, though, reminded her to handle one thing at a time, and she jogged after him to the Clothing Room.

Their trek would eventually end at a doorway on the wall of a tall, cylindrical structure that reached from the floor of the cavern to its ceiling. Within the doorway was a room filled with vine-like tendrils hanging from the ceiling.

||Please step inside.||

As long as he was still flying, Nathan figured he'd could fly into the room, and get a better look at whatever the hell those vines are. So he flew a bit faster toward the ceiling.

Vines? Lacaille wasn't surprised that the place was keeping to its general organic "theme", but she was curious as to how they related to clothing. She walked inside at a slightly more sedate pace, moving towards the nearest of the vines in order to try and get a better look.

Several of the vines reached out for both of them, lifting them into the air (or keeping him in the air, in Nathan's case), covering them in clothing made from some sort of dark, plant-like material, before lowering them back down to the ground.

.........What the hell? Nathan was on the ground again, and staring down at the material. It's clean, but does it... does it have pulse like that?

....All over even? Well, not too bad in one area. But he wasn't going to say anything about that out loud.

"And where's the lockers?"

Another lighted path led back out of the room and around to another doorway along the wall of the cylindrical structure.

||This way, please.||

Lacaille was fiddling with the material a bit, tugging and picking at it to test its ductility and durability and pressing on the pulsing veins to see if the suit would react. As she did, she followed the lit path almost without paying attention to it. "I wonder if this is symbiotic..."