Time after Time: An Explanation

[x-firestar.livejournal.com]

Despite the scare, Angel is curious and convinces Jean to let her see the newest patient. The answers she gets are not what she was expecting.



The Medlab was quiet except for the sounds of sneakered feet trotting down the hallway. Angel, who had been kept safely away from the newest arrival, paused and looked around, hands stuffed into her back pockets, as she tried to find sight of either Dr. Grey-Summers or Dr. Voght. Though she rather hoped she'd find the first one; as uncomfortable as she could be around telepaths, Dr. Grey-Summers was less likely to look like she was going to eat her.

And, besides, she was working on the whole telepathic wiggins thing.

"Anyone home?" she called, wincing as her voice cracked. Okay, so she was a bit nervous but the whole 'the guy who fell through the ceiling thinks he knows you thing' was freaking her out a little bit.

"Back here, Angel," Jean called from one of the exam rooms. Stepping out into the main area she carefully closed the door behind her before turning to smile at the younger redhead. "What can I do for you?"

"Is there any chance I can see…" Saying 'the crazy man that fell from the roof' would probably get her gently led outside the infirmary. "Um." Crap. She didn't know how to phrase it except for the crazy man part. "I wanted to see the guy who nearly gave Mr. Summers a heart attack." Well, that hadn't been much better. She rubbed the back of her neck. "He said he knew me. Sort of. And I'm curious. And you're only a mental shout and flail away if he goes crazy."

Stop with the crazy, she told herself sharply.

Jean considered Angel for a few moments, before slowly nodding. "He's resting in the exam room back there," she said. "Fades in and out because he's seriously over-exerted himself, but it ought to be ok for you to sit with him for a bit. If he does wake up you can see if he'll give you any more information than he's shared with us."

Angel quietly clapped her hands together. "Thank you!" she said, sounding relieved. She was worried that because of the whole breaking and entering, plus grabbing a student, thing he was going to be kept away from her. In case Dr. Grey-Summers changed her mind, Angel scampered down towards the room in question.

She hesitated outside of it before knocking on it quietly and slipping in through the door. He was resting but she had no idea if he was awake or not – outside of poking him, she just cleared her throat and said quietly, "Um, hi?"

The stranger sat up from the bed, his wavy red hair sticking up at odd angles as he blinked at Angel. "Angelica?" he asked quietly.

"Yeeeaaaah," she replied, staring at him openly. He was cute. For an old guy. But she couldn't figure out how old he was. There was old, like Sam. Then old old, like Mr. Summers. Then 'where should I send the flowers' old like the Professor. He could have been one of the first two. "But I go by Angel – though you can call me Angelica if you want to. I'm staring, aren't I? I'm sorry, it's not every day I see someone fall through our ceilings."

"Well, I wasn't expecting a populated universe this time," the man said, sitting up and smiling. "Much less finding you here... my god, come here and let me look at you. After all this time, it's hard to believe..."

He cleared his throat and looked somewhat sheepish. "This is somewhat awkward. Do you... that is, am I familiar to you at all?"

"Let me get a chair. I mean, I'm fairly positive at this point you're not going to go all weird…" She looked at him. "Sorry, weirder, on me." The room came with a standard visitors chair and she tugged it over so she could sit down next to his bed.

He had pretty much given her the go ahead to stare blatantly and she did before shaking her head. "Nope, sorry. I mean, red hair, you could be family I guess. I've got a lot of those but I thought I knew everyone. I don't even know your name."

Her response got a chuckle. "Family, that's one way to put it. Allowing for chronological shifts between universes, of course, we haven't met yet. We didn't meet until college. An art gala, you had a new holography exhibit that raised everyone's eyebrows, and I only wound up there on accident looking for a professor, and we somehow met out on a balcony trying to escape the crowd at the after-party and..."

He stopped his narrative, looking at Angel with a small grin. "There I go again, rambling on. You have to understand, I never expected to find you again, certainly not like this - everything I've done has been for you, and... it's me, Angel. It's Ben."

Carefully, he raised himself further, turning to sit on the edge of the bed and reach out to put a hand on Angel's shoulder. "Benjamin Russell. When I left, we were... it was two weeks shy of our fifth wedding anniversary."

As he reached out to touch her, Angel jerked away in shock – not from the touch but his words. The back chair legs slid out from under her at the action and she squawked in surprise as the motion sent her tumbling backwards, nearly kicking Ben in the head. She wound up on her back, legs tangled hopelessly in the chair, as she sought to regain her voice.

"Dude! What … no … you're … old! Cute for an old guy but oh my god. What?!" Arms waved around spastically. "I'm sixteen!"


She felt a concerned touch in her mind and the only responsible response she had to Jean was #Bwah!#.

Ben slid off the bed, extending a hand to Angel, then stepping back abruptly. "Yes, I had thought that might be a wee bit awkward. I suppose I should start from the beginning, then?"

As soon as he had moved, Angel had slapped a hand over her eyes. "Are you wearing one of those hospital gowns? Because, uh, if you are, can you sit back down?" She peeked at him from between her fingers and slowly got up off the floor. There was going to be one heck of a bruise on her butt the next day. "The beginning is good." Still, she couldn't stop blushing and she had to reach up to smooth the locks of hair that had suddenly caught fire.

Gingerly sitting back on the bed, Benjamin took a deep breath. "The beginning then. Judging from what I have seen here briefly, I assume this is a private research facility? It wouldn't happen to be researching junction theory, would it?" At Angel's blank look, he frowned and ventured further. "Pan-stellar gates? Deep astronomy? Parallel universes? Einstein-Rosen-Podolosky bridges?"

"Gesundheit," Angel joked. "No, actually, this is a school. For mutants." At his blank look, she held up a hand and called up a ball of fire. "I set things on fire, so I'm a mutant. I can also fly. And, hey, I totally recognized one of those words, does that help? I know who Einstein is, at least. Forge would beat me with my book if I didn't."

At Angel's display, Ben's eyes grew wide and he literally leaped from the bed in astonishment, barely landing on his feet on the other side of the room. "Good God!" he exclaimed. "You say this is a natural ability? You're... you're generating this energy biologically? That's astounding! And... mutation, you said? A... genetic quirk?"

He snapped his fingers, pacing across the room. "Of course! Mallory's theorem of convergent temporal development. Causal refraction, indeed. Oh, Professor Arturo would be beside himself, God rest his soul. Allow me to make a conjecture, Angelica. Is it true that in this world, there are others like you with these... abilities, due to one small variance in your genetic code? Something inherent in your DNA that makes you... different?"

With Ben's sudden movement, Angel had curled up in herself but she relaxed when she realized he was just ranting science and not going to do anything that would bring Jean running in to the rescue. "Um. Yeeeees?" she answered and then cleared her throat. "You do realize I have no idea what you actually said before that, right? Dude, I think you skipped beginning and shot yourself into space."

Ben pressed his hands together, still pacing. "In 1975, a group of scientists on the Versailles Orbital Station discovered an anomalous signal coming from the star they were circling, a signal whose origin could not be mathematically defined. It took close to thirty years, but eventually we discovered - Professor Arturo and I - proof that our universe was merely one of an infinite number, like... like sheets of paper stacked and overlapping. The immense fusion reactions in the heart of a star would make cracks in the fabric of the universe, allowing energy through. I had a theory, however, that if one could send energy through, then using the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky theorem, one could translate matter through these rifts into another universe."

He shook his head, leaning against the wall as if exhausted. "They called me crazy, of course, and pulled my funding. I was ready to halt my research and take a teaching position at Oxford... and then you got sick."

Ben paused for a while, catching his breath. "They still hadn't come up with a name for it, but it struck most victims at puberty. A genetic condition, incredibly rare, but becoming more and more prevalent over time. Almost as if... something in evolution went awry, possibly a response to human overpopulation, no one knows. But you were affected, and rather than... rather than watch you slip away from me, we put you into a cryogenic coma while I tried to work for a cure. But even the world's most prominent geneticists could do nothing. And so I thought..." he clenched his fists, then turned and smiled at Angel, his arms wide. "If we could not find a cure, then perhaps in one of these mirror-universes, there would be a cure. I went to Versailles Station, and... well, not to put too fine a point on it, I stole two zero-point singularity reactors. Bombs, Angel, bombs that could implode a star. By this point, the Station was completely unmanned, alone in a dead solar system. I set my calculations as best I could, and I detonated the first reactor in the heart of the star."

There was a lengthy pause as Angel tried to digest it all. A majority of the words had made no sense to her – mirror-universes? However, 'sick' and 'bomb' certainly were words she knew. Ben might have taken her silence for confusion – which it was – and took a breath to keep on going. Angel experienced a moment of panic. He would keep trying to explain in scientific mumbo jumbo and she was going to wither away and die of old age by the time he was done.

"Mr. Russell," she started but she hadn't caught his attention. She tried again. "Uh, Mr. Russell." Words that made no sense were still coming out and she stood up and stamped one foot in irritation. "Ben!" She clapped her hands over her mouth.

She wasn't supposed to talk to adults like that.

Ben stopped suddenly, raising an eyebrow at Angel. "If I wasn't sure that it really was you before now," he said with a grin. "You... that is, my wife, she does that all the time."

"I yell at you a lot?" Angel asked between her fingers before sighing. "Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I do that to my boys all the time now." He looked sincere and he sounded like he knew what he was talking about but it was all so unbelievable. So thought the girl who could, on occasion, snort fire. "You seem like a nice guy, Ben, and you look like the kind of guy I'd go for when I get old but you've gotta understand that it's really hard to…well, you fell from my ceiling! You blew up a sun!"

She paused.

"Is that even ethical?"

Ben looked away for a moment. "It doesn't matter," he said firmly. "If there exists somewhere in any of the myriad universes a cure that can save you, save the woman I love, then ethics don't matter. You have to understand, Angelica, I would shatter a billion stars to save you. And now I have that chance."

'Oh my god, that's totally the most romantic thing I've ever heard!' she mentally squealed to herself.

"As awesome as it is that I apparently am the coolest thing in your world," Angel said softly, "I'm just gonna ask that Dr. Grey-Summers does her thing with you. Because it … it sounds like a sci-fi novel! I mean, a really cool one since I'm in it but still. I'm just a little weirded out by the whole thing and, uh, I'm only sixteen so the folks here might be a little 'grr, argh' until they get the skinny on everything."

She paused at the door and looked back. "Am I, well, the other me and god, that's going to get confusing, really." She stopped, frustrated with herself. "Am I really worth all that trouble?"

Ben smiled, nodding to Angel. "More than you know," he replied.

“O-okay. Um. Yeah. Wow…hey, Dr. Grey-Summers!” Angel gave him a weak, if stunned smile, and fled.