Time After Time: Genius vs. Genius

[x-firestar.livejournal.com]

When Angel hears the news of what's going on, she drags Ben down to meet Forge. The two geniuses clash and Angel asks Forge to do something that he would rather never do again.



For someone who had been so visible the rest of the time, Angel had had a heck of a time finding him after being told about the x-factor gene stuff with his wife. When she finally had found him, she'd done something she'd been avoiding the rest of the time. Touching him. But she'd seen him and promptly accosted him in the hallways and now she was dragging him at almost breakneck speeds down the hall way.

"Okay, I don't know if this is gonna work but we're going to talk to the brains of this operation." Angel stopped to think. "The other brains of this operation. Or maybe the other other brains…sorry, got off track. I'm taking you to see a genius. He'll do something genius-y, like Dr. Grey-Summers suggested."

Ben nodded as he walked, adjusting the various devices on the harness he wore. While Angel had convinced him not to wear the entire protective suit that he'd appeared in the Danger Room wearing, he felt out of place without his equipment, pausing every so often to inspect mundane things like light switches, thermostats, and the electronic keypads by the doors.

"It's all so similar, and yet different," he announced. "Incandescent gas used as a lighting element? If someone wrote that in a sci-fi novel, they would be laughed at."

"That's the problem with sci-fi," came the voice from a side door. "Too much fiction, not enough science. Who's this, Angel? New teacher or another visitor?" Forge asked, popping his head out from his lab briefly.

"There's my resident genius!" she said cheerfully. "Forge, this is Ben Russell. He's. Um. He'smyfuturehusbandfromanotherdimension." Angel grinned at him. "Hasn't someone been by to tell you he fell through a giant hole thing in the ceiling of the Danger Room? I swear, Mr. Summers was ready to make me write a report on 'Why I Will Not Touch Strangers That Fall From Ceilings' essay."

"Oh, right, the alleged dimensional traveler," Forge said disdainfully. "Well, we take in all sorts here. Head injuries and all."

"...I beg your pardon?" Benjamin responded, offended by the young inventor's assertions. "This is the alleged genius that's supposed to provide help? I doubt he's even heard of the n-space hyperdimensional linkage theory."

"Chapman's fifth superstring theorem," Forge retaliated, sliding into the doorway on a rolling stool. "Concerning dark matter and displacement through nonperceptible spatial dimensions. Disproved by the existence of the top quark."

"Top quark?" Ben replied incredulously. "Inconceivable pseudoscience. The existence of a top quark would invalidate neutrino spin-"

"Neutrino spin involves all six flavors of quark, keeping a constant subatomic mass. Duh." Forge's reply was given in the tone one would use to explain basic math to a small child.

"Next you'll try and claim there's no graviton particle," Ben shot back, cheeks beginning to redden. "And you're what passes for a scientist here?"

Forge stood up from the chair. "Gravitons are theoretical. Quarks, however, have been detected through large hadron collisions-"

"Large hadron collisions? Don't make me laugh."

"Says the man carrying around a burned-out light bulb," Forge riposted, poking at the black sphere on Ben's harness. Immediately, the red-haired traveler jumped back, hands cupped protectively around the sphere.

"Don't touch that!" he shrieked. "That's a zero-point singularity reactor! It's designed to initiate stellar collapse!"

Forge arched an eyebrow. "You're carrying a portable black hole on your belt?"

"Yes!"

Whatever reaction Ben expected, Forge's laughter obviously wasn't it. "Angel," he said to the teenage girl, "your friend here is a wee bit deluded. His singularity reactor doesn't work."

The entire time the two scientists had been arguing, Angel had been growing more and more unamused by the entire thing. By the time Forge had finished laughing and Ben had turned back to her, she had her arms crossed over her chest and was doing her level best not to set either of their pants on fire. Perhaps Ben, having seen a similar look on a similar face, understood but it was rare for the young pyrokinetic to get that irritated in front of others.

"Forge," she said, almost between teeth gritted in irritation – they'd been bickering like children! Highly intelligent children but still! "The telepaths scanned him. They said that, at the very least, he believes what he's saying and, dude, he talks way too much like you to be making up a science. Dr. Grey-Summers thinks that what his wife is suffering from is something with the x-gene. In us, it turns us into mutants. In them, well…" She looked over at Ben and dropped her hands down to her side, looking quite depressed. "Apparently it kills them."

"So he's got a convincing delusion," Forge insisted, wheeling himself back and motioning the two into the small laboratory. "Even still, rattling off zero point energy? It's mathematically impossible. Observe."

He took a marker and began scribbling equations on a whiteboard. After a few moments, he pointed to a complex series of numbers and symbols. "You can't maintain a singularity without breaking Hobson's Limit. Can't argue with math."

"Indeed you can't," Ben agreed, walking forward and picking up another marker, writing over Forge's equations. "Voila. Zero point energy proven."

Forge blinked. "No, no, that doesn't work. You're using an incorrect theorem."

"I most certainly am not."

"You most certainly are! You're completely inverting Hobson's Limit, the mathematical representation of n-spatial superstring boundaries. You're assuming that energy can exist in a multiphasic waveform-"

"-which it does-"

"-does not-"

"Young man, you are singlehandedly the most infuriating excuse for an academic that I have ever had the burden of meeting," Ben insisted. "Look, perhaps if you accept the postulate that certain laws of physics are rather malleable when presented with a different superstring architecture..."

Forge pondered. "I'll stipulate that for the moment, it's possible. Hence why your singularity reactor doesn't work."

"As I explained-" Ben protested briefly before Forge's arm shot out, twisting a knurled ring at the top of the sphere and pressing a red button. A look of horror crossed Ben's face, then surprise when he looked down at the silent device. "-but that should have released a neutrino cascade, you didn't set the proximity timer and... well, that should only happen if there was a six-series quark structure present... very well, I accept the laws of your reality, Mister Forge."

On the side of the two men, Angel had found some paper and had been trying to remember her homework assignment. She stopped when they quieted and asked, "Well, who won? Forge? Okay, great." She flopped bonelessly on the top part of the desk and tapped her fingers. "Okay, assume that his delusions are real…wait, did you cover that already? You totally lost me. Anyway. So, say the whole x-gene thing is real. I…hey, Ben, what does this disease do, anyway?"

Ben continued drawing on the board, marking a double helix on the white surface. "It is a genetic condition, linked to a specific set of genes - your Doctor Grey-Summers said that here it's referred to as the x-factor, and causes any number of genetic mutations. However, possibly due to the changes in the subtle physical laws between your universe and mine, it has manifested in my wife... and numerous other individuals... as a degenerative disease. Paralysis. Blindness. Eventual slow, progressive neural deterioration, Mister Forge. Our medical science cannot cure this. My wi... Angelica believes you may have some insight."

Forge nodded, then looked over at Angel. "I get what he's saying, but why me? I'm no geneticist, I mean, I understand DNA and the intricacies of the mutant genome, but only as a layman. I've never..."

His face paled. "Oh. No. No, you are not asking this of me. No."

Angel slid off the stool and counter so she could walk around and stand in front of him. She didn't know the whole story but she'd heard pieces about the machine he built when Dr. Grey-Summers had mentioned it. And the fact that it was not a topic to be talked about much. "Look, Forge…" She stopped and stared at Ben for a moment – he was still scribbling madly on the board but he'd slowed down, obviously listening. "I don't know much about it. And even if I did, you know me – I wouldn't get the science and you'd make that scrunchy face you make at me so often. I'm not asking you to build that again. But…"

She spread her hands. "You're the smartest guy I know. In that big brain of yours, is there any possible way you can think of to use something like that for this?" Angel looked down at her hands as she clasped them before her and she continued to talk, sounding a little more older than she was used to sounding. "Ben told me that his wife was worth it; he blew up a star and probably got into some trouble for it just so he can find a cure. If I can help him, then I can prove to myself that someone like me is worth being told that. If you can't, you can't. But…can you try? If you can't, you can't and I won't say another word about it."

"I don't even know if the science would work," Forge protested, "So much of what he's saying is different. Asking me to recreate the Neutralizer is like... like asking a Jew to go back in time and save Hitler. To do that, to make something that can effectively wipe out what makes us who and what we are, do you understand how much of an abomination that is, Angel? How much I wish I'd never even thought of such a thing?"

Forge stopped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he looked into Ben Russell's face. "Mister Forge," the other scientist said quietly. "I understand. You made something horrible, something you wish you could uninvent. Something you see as a tool of nothing but pain and destruction. But there is a chance, I believe there is a true and honest chance, that it can save my Angelica. And millions like her, Mister Forge."

Ben sighed, and took a step back. "I have crossed dozens of worlds, some without even the first shreds of humanity, each time pulled through another rift to somewhere that might hold a cure. And now I see that potential. I see it in you. Please," he begged, "Please."

Clenching his fists, Forge turned away from Ben and Angelica and closed his eyes. The horrible feeling flashed over him, like years before when the Neutralizer's beam had reflected back onto him, making him for an agonizing period of time - normal. The very thought of creating it again, the potential for such loss...

"Your wife," he said firmly without opening his eyes. "You love her."

"More than anything in all the universes," Ben replied earnestly.

Forge turned and opened his eyes, walking to the whiteboard and brushing it clean. "Then we're going to need to share information, everything from the very basics. I don't know how much time you have, but you're going to have to teach me everything you know about electrical theory, genetics, subatomic physics, the whole deal. Because this won't work here, but we can make it work there."

In a moment, the maturity melted away and left Angel a squealing sixteen year old. "You are the best genius in the world! Is there anything I can do to help?" Both men turned and stared at her. "...you guys want a sandwich? Maybe some tea? What about those little cookie things?"

"Red Bull."

"Coffee."

"Donuts."

"Yes, donuts. And bacon."

"Donuts and bacon and Pop-Tarts."

"Pop-Tarts?"

"Welcome to our universe, dude."