| Date: 20 December 2007
Characters: Professor Yana, Toshiko Sato Location: library Link to IJ: thread #15121 |
 The Professor had slept, had breakfast, gone exploring--and found the library. It took him all of fifteen minutes to end up with an armful of books, and he's now, some time later, sitting in a very comfortable chair flipping back and forth between two books, with more spread out on a low table in front of him. There are Physics books, an Astronomy book, probably some Shakespeare in there somewhere, and a couple of books that are in languages he probably shouldn't be able to read, but he certainly hasn't noticed that. |
 Toshiko was bringing back an armful of books to exchange for new ones. Hers were mostly science -- time travel, relativity, technology, even some science fiction. She smiled at the older man as she settled in to a chair near him. |
| The Professor smiled back, then said, "Oh, is that a book about time travel? That's what I was looking for before I got...distracted." He gave a rueful grin toward his pile of books. |
| "Yes, it is," she said and handed it over with a smile. "It seems to be a popular topic right now." |
| "I should think so." He took the book. "Oh, pardon me, I'm Professor Yana. And if you know more about this place than that it's outside of space and time, you know more than I do." |
| "Toshiko Sato," she said. "And I think we're about even. Where and when are you from?" |
| "A planet called Malcassario, and as to the when, well, let's just say uncomfortably close to the end of the universe. What about yourself?" |
| "Nowhere as nearly exotic," Tosh said, smiling. "Cardiff. The United Kingdom in the year ." |
| " is exotic, to me. Practically mythical. What's it like, where you come from?" |
| "Not too different from this, actually," she said. "More technologically advanced, more crowded. Noisier. More polluted. What about your home? What's it like?" |
| He smiled at her. "A lot more metal, and not nearly so many books. Computer files are not nearly as satisfying to read. Although you can find things faster, I suppose." |
| "I don't mind doing research this way," she said gesturing to the piles of books, "But I miss my computer." |
| "I hope your computer is far less temperamental than mine. Of course, considering what it was made of and how much electrical tape was involved, I'm lucky mine works at all, I suppose." |
| "Top of the line," she said proudly. "I ... you send you were close to the end of the universe, right?" |
| "Near as I can tell, mine was made from the navigation system of a crashed spaceship and possibly a refrigeration system. And no telling what else."
Her question sunk in. "Oh, yes, very nearly. Far enough along that all the stars were gone long before I was born." |
| "I do mean to be rude but ... you're still using electricity?" |
| "Not rude at all, and yes, still. Or I guess I should say again, because clearly for a while civilization had advanced beyond that. The technology's a bit beyond us, now, though, and the texts are basically too muddled to be helpful. Too many translations and partial files and things to reconstruct. And not enough time to reconstruct it anyway." |
| "Aha!" Tosh exclaimed, and it looked like a metaphorical lightbulb had gone on over her head. "I thought you should have been more advanced. When did tech capability begin to decline? Do you know?" |
| "Well, there are those who will say that it began to decline about , years ago, but from what I can tell, there were significant advances still being made as late as , years ago. There hasn't been a university open in at least years. It's all in bits and pieces, I'm afraid." |
| "Do you still have a year calendar?" Tosh said, doing rapid math in her head. "I realized it wouldn't be the same as an earth-based on, but ... what year are you talking about?" |
| "Based on the oldest calendar we know, about the year one hundred trillion." |
| "Wow," she said quietly, slightly stunned. She sat back in her chair and tried to process that. |
| "It's kind of amazing, when you think about it, isn't it? That humanity survives that long, in one form or another. It's hard for me to believe that there are people here from the twenty-first century." |
| "It's really amazing," Tosh agreed with a warm smile. "Knowing where we are and what we'll have to achieve. What we will achieve." And then lose, but she wasn't concentrating on that just now. |
| "Oh, yes," the Professor smiled back at her, caught up in her enthusiasm. "The people of one planet, spread across the galaxies." |
| "Without ruining them all," she said hopefully. |
| "Yes, certainly," he said. "I'm perfectly willing to trust history on this one, and history says we helped more than we hurt." He knew how much that history was worth, but he was trying to be reassuring, anyway. |
| "That's good to know," Tosh said. "We currently have a way of screwing most things up." |
| "Maybe not as much as it seems. It's hard to know when it's happening, what the outcome is going to be." |
| "Hindsight is twenty-twenty." |
| "Hindsight is what?" He asked, puzzled. "It's certainly clearer than foresight, in any case." |
| "It's an expression. We have a system for measuring eyesight and according that system, someone with '-' eyesight has perfect vision," she explained. "So you can only see clearly when you're looking back." |
| "Ah, I see. All too true. There are times when it would be nice if it worked the other way, though, wouldn't it?" He glanced down at the book Toshiko had given him. "Any instructions in here for building a time machine?" He was (mostly) joking. |
| "Not that I've found," she said with a laugh. "I've been looking though. Or for some hint about what this place is about. I don't suppose you've found any personal journals or histories on the shelves?" That was her next plan of attack. |
| "Oh, good thinking. No, I haven't, but I haven't made it over to that side of the room yet," he said gesturing past Toshiko. "Shall we look? Might go faster with both of us. Although you might have to throw a book or two at me to keep me from getting distracted." |
| "Only if I don't get distracted myself," she said as she stood. |
| The Professor chuckled. "We're quite a pair," he said. "Oh, well, even if we don't find what we're looking for, I bet we find something interesting." |
| "Once I stopped panicking, I discovered everything here was interesting," she said. |
| The Professor walked over to a section of bookshelves and started looking as he answered her. "I'm sure I drove Jack crazy when I first got here, insisting that I knew him and pestering him with questions. Have you met Jack?" |
| "I do," Tosh said with a quick grin, examining the titles across from him. "I ... well, I don't know if it's him I work with, but I work with a Jack." |
| "Jack Harkness? Evidently the one I met here was a younger version of the one I'd met before. Looked the same, though. Although he said that looks might be deceiving." |
| "When did you meet Jack?" she asked curiously. |
| "Just a few hours before I ended up here, actually. It was a strange day," he said, grinning a little at the understatement. |
| "I have a feeling that's an understatement," she said. |
| "Well, it's not every day you get people turning up on your doorstep and solving problems you've been trying to solve for months. Not time travellers, anyway." He looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head and smiled at her. "Or maybe you do if you work with Jack, I don't know." |
| "Well, as you said, the whole time travel thing is sort of new to us." She paused, leaning against a shelf with her shoulder and crossing her arms. "People, you said? Who was Jack with?" |
| "A man called the Doctor and a young woman named Martha. With a big blue wooden box, of all things." |
| "Huh." She got that look on her face that meant she was mentally sorting and categorizing. |
| He smiled at her gently. "I can see the wheels turning from here. What did I say?" |
| "In my timeline, just before I came here, Jack -- my Jack -- had disappeared," she said. "Part of me wants to be convinced that he came here, but the Jack here is either not my Jack or he is but I'm ahead of him. But ... there are two Iantos here too, so it's ... I'm just sorting through all the possibilities," she finally said sheepishly. "I'm. I know time isn't always linear. Or the way we move through it isn't. It's just I never really had personal experience with it until several months ago." |
| "What happened several months ago?" he asked, curious. "If you don't mind my asking," he continued hastily. |
| "The place where I live has a rift, things fall through it from other places and other times," she explained. "We were investigating something -- Jack and I -- and we ended up being trapped in the 1940s." |
| "Things fall through from different places and times? That sounds fascinating. Well, except that being trapped must've been...disconcerting, to say the least. How did you find your way back?" |
| "We didn't exactly. We left clues, an equation that helped control the rift, hoping they would remain for our teammates to find in our future." |
| "That sounds like quite a gamble you had to rely on! Were you trapped there long?" |
| "It seemed like it, but it was less than a day, really." |
| "I'll bet it did feel like longer, not knowing if you could get home. Jack assured me that people have been able to leave this place and that they ended up at the same time and place that they left. I hope he's right about that." |
| "Me too," she said, pausing again. "Maybe I've been trying too hard." |
| "I don't think there's any harm in trying to figure it out for ourselves," he said. "It makes an interesting puzzle, anyway." He idly examined the spines of books as he spoke. |
| "No, I was just thinking. I didn't try to get here, maybe I should stop trying to get out of here and it will just happen." |
| "It's a thought. Have you found any patterns in who ends up here and from when? What they were doing at the time?" |
| "Not really. There are a lot of us from Torchwood here, but since we work with the rift, that only seems logical." |
| "Yes, that makes sense, I suppose, and certainly at the end of the universe it would have to be easier for rifts like that to form. The collapse of reality itself..." He trailed off, thinking. "This just seems like a strange place for the rifts to lead. Why here?" |
| "Exactly! And where is here anyway?" |
| "Some kind of...pocket universe, outside of the one we know, maybe, where time works differently, or...I really have no idea." |
| "Back to the books for us," she said with another smile. |
| He smiled back at her. "Back to the books it is, then." |