They Sat in a Brightly Lit Room
There were no footprints at the scene of the crime, only small, square prints, those that did not correspond to any kind of shoe that was on record. The only other interesting piece of evidence was a trail of security cam footage that led to the recovery of one name, of one person who might be the next target. Mr John William Wilson (“John to my friends”).
It was a fairly nondescript, brightly lit room that the two were seated in. The kind of brightly lit room that, over centuries of science fiction shows borrowing ideas, themes, and designs from each other had come to symbolize the future. It didn’t necessarily mean that the two were part of an evil megacorporation, or that they were fighting the oppressive rulers, or that they were millions of miles away from earth. In fact, they were none of these things, but they were in the future. An indeterminate amount of time away from the present, perhaps so far into the future that time had become something entirely removed from everyday life, these two were sat at a table that would be at home in any board room, seated by the same end.
The one with darker hair, the one who seemed to be more male, was seated at the head of the table, and he seemed to hold more power. This was because he was the other person’s boss. His name was Gerald, and he had been working his job for a long time. There were papers laid out in front of him, and they had been laid there by the other person in the room. In contrast, this person had brighter hair, was about as male as they were female, and was not seated at the head of the table, instead perched on the table itself, pointing at the documents laid next to their boss.
Now that the scene is set, they seem to have reached the perfect point in the conversation such that if someone were to walk into the room just then they would be able to quickly grasp the topic being discussed, and the positions of both those present. Gerald spoke first, “So what you’re saying is you need permission to-”
“To go back to the life of John Wilson, and make sure things don’t get even more screwed up than they already have been! I just want to do my flipping job here!”, the second person—whose name was Autumn, although no one called them that, instead using their preferred last name—interrupted, the words flowing out of them in a way that every author wishes that they would when they need to finish tapping out that story and meet their deadline.
Gerald frowned. Clearly he (like most people) didn’t enjoy being interrupted, much less with information that he already knew. “Tomothy, you’ve already gone over this. You want to head in, because you think that this killer you’ve been tracking throughout the…” and here he glanced down, making a show of referencing a number that was still fresh in his memory (although he wanted to check that his memory was correct) from one of the papers that had been straightened out to line up with the edge of the table as he spoke. Tomothy started to reach towards the papers, an aborted gesture that was perhaps going to start off another rushed explanation, words that they seemed to need to get out, to share, to have heard.
“Throughout various millennia,” Gerald eventually settled on, not finding the information easily in the clumsily organized but aesthetically pleasing stacks. Tomothy’s hand twitched again, wanting to reach out and fill in the blanks, but they held themself back with the knowledge that in this case information for their case would actually hinder it. “So you think that you should be sent back to this John Wilson, around ‘the middle of the year they called 1910’, in order to stop this murderer that you think is targeting him next?”
Tomothy nodded sharply, but before they could open their mouth to continue pleading their case Gerald pressed a button under the table and the door slid open. “You have my full permission to go, but read through our resources on this Mr. Wilson before you do. I’m well aware of your record, so I have no reason to believe that you will not approach this professionally, and choose to take actions that you know will not irreparably damage anything. The file will be ready for you.”
Tomothy exited the room, and strode down the brightly lit hallway back to another, identical looking, brightly lit room. Despite their obvious earlier enthusiasm, they weren’t in a rush.
One woman was seated in a brightly lit room, the white walls washing out the definition of the corners while the light blue tint that had ubiquitously become known as the calling card of holograms tinted the room into reality. The woman had darker hair than Gerald and brighter hair than Tomothy, and was reading text off of one of the holograms to Tomothy, who was hovering awkwardly near the desk which did not have a second chair at it.
“Well you certainly know how to pick ‘em, don’t you. They’re…” and here she paused for a moment, not due to a lack of understanding of the information that she was reading, or a desire to condense it, but an ingrained need to milk the information she had for every little bit of drama possible. “They’re a little out there, so don’t plan on bein’ able to figure out shit from what he gives ya. I mean looking at the records here he’s a notorious eccentric, obsessed with obscure forms of transportation and unless you think that’s why he’s a target...”
“It might very well be, how else would the killer have heard of him?” Tomothy pointed out. The woman paused (and Tomothy paused, and realized in the silence that he did not know the woman’s name), thinking over this fact for a moment, before deciding to move on.
“So your cover is that you’re gonna be renting the spare room that he’s got, and we’ve supplied you with transportation and funds as always to make your journey as painless and unnoticed as possible,” she spoke in an intentionally inflectionless tone, making the scripted nature of her speech clear. “We’re giving you a Ford Model T, which was pretty much the car that everyone wanted and most people of means could get at the time, so it shouldn’t really blow your cover as long as you say that you went a little over budget in the rush for the car and need to get a little bit cheaper living. Even if you aren’t driving much, you’ll still need to get gas and such, and new technology means other drivers might not be as educated as to how to safely use their vehicles, so plan out your trips carefully and take care to not get into any accidents. No offroading, the cars weren’t designed for that, and they won’t work as well if the paths are slippery with ice.” She paused in her rant, glancing up to check over the outfit that Tomothy had donned as she spoke, and looked over it quickly for any obvious flaws.
“You’re gonna have to ditch the top hat, it’s too high class, unless it’s from your shopping spree in which case it stays in the car, shows that you’re enjoying the new luxury.” Tomothy nodded and reluctantly removed the hat, placing it into a nearby box which they set near the door with the other crates of outgoing supplies. The boxes promptly vanished, and by the time Tomothy had turned to the woman in surprise she was already beckoning him out of the door.
“I know we’ve all got a horrifically skewed sense of time, but you need to get to transportation now. You’re scheduled to return in around 10 minutes, I don’t know who decided to cut it this close but I’m sure we can figure out who it was on your return.”
She was still talking by the time Tomothy went out the door. She quickly returned to her holograms and wiped all records of her booking Tomothy’s return. Ten minutes later, she directed him to IT for help figuring out why the system for logging the bookings of returns had mysteriously lost his information.
Two hours later, years that were no longer counted ago, in 1910, Tomothy was seated on the bed in the room that he was renting that was owned by Mr Wilson (“John to my friends”). The walls of his room were not bright white, they were a olive drab color, that would have made the room seem far too dark if it were not for the miraculous existence of windows, and the fact that the walls were broken up with various posters that belonged to Mr Wilson (“John to my friends”). The posters were mostly the kind that one could imagine a student creating for a school project, each depicting the history and use of various forms of transportation. Some of them were things that made sense to need to understand (from Tomothy’s perspective), such as trains or cars or the Titanic. However, others covered more obscure forms of transportation, such as stilts or unicycles or the tank designed by Leonardo Da Vinci. Deciding that the children of Mr Wilson (“John to my friends”) who had such interesting school projects would make a decent conversation starter, Tomothy began unpacking his stuff quickly before making his way downstairs to get to know Mr Wilson (“John to my friends”) better, in order to figure out why such an ordinary man would be the target of a time traveling murderer.
Over the course of the conversation Tomothy began to learn that as long as you ignored his eccentricities, Mr Wilson (“John to my friends”) was a perfectly normal man for the time. Of course by Tomothy’s standards, there were many things odd about him, but Tomothy’s standards would be odd if Gerald was asked to judge them, so that really was a non statement. When they eventually got around to asking him about any potential offspring, Tomothy realized that all the posters had in fact been created by Mr Wilson (“John to my friends”) himself, as well as the fact that he was unemployed (coasting on an inherited fortune) and spent all his free time researching these various forms of transportation with the intent of one day compiling a book.
Although Tomothy’s cover included a fictional day job that forced him out of the house for most of the day, they did most of his actual work when home. They had a notebook and pencil that they had purchased from a local store which they were using to note down possible ideas as to why John was being targeted. Perhaps he would grow up to do something that would change the timeline (crossed out when a quick question to the woman, who they had taken to referring to as Missy in their head, revealed that this was not the case), or maybe he would have children that would grow up to do something (a few quick conversations with John dissuaded that notion rather quickly). The most likely notions at the moment were either that it was random, in which case there was nothing for Tomothy to do, that it was revenge for John wasting his life in some way, by not focusing on what he was doing but instead living in history (or perhaps just for having the gall to follow his dreams), or another option.
The option that Tomothy hoped for was not any of those. They hoped that John somehow knew something that would expose the criminal, although Tomothy had no idea what it could be, unless it was the fact that the cranks that powered the movement of Da Vinci's tank (which were apparently turned by the power of four strong men in order to get the vehicle moving) were set in opposite directions according to the original sketch, so it would likely never have been able to get anywhere. Or maybe that if one were to take the train from Seattle to Chicago in 1910 it would cost $65.00. Or maybe the murderer needed to hide the fact that a traveler from Chicago to Boston would need to plan for the trip to take 21 hours and 20 minutes if they took the limited stop train, and closer to 48 hours if they took a cheaper train that made more stops.
It wasn’t a well lit room, and no one was seated in it. Only if one looked very carefully, with a specific preconstructed image in mind, could they realize that there was a woman present, although she wasn’t seated. Through the differences between this room and most rooms that normal people find themselves in, one could easily surmise that the owner of this room was either an emo, the serial killer that Tomothy was chasing, or both. She was both.
In the corner of the room, a pair of stilts were leaned against the wall.
---
The one with darker hair, the one who seemed to be more male, was seated at the head of the table, and he seemed to hold more power. This was because he was the other person’s boss. His name was Gerald, and he had been working his job for a long time. There were papers laid out in front of him, and they had been laid there by the other person in the room. In contrast, this person had brighter hair, was about as male as they were female, and was not seated at the head of the table, instead perched on the table itself, pointing at the documents laid next to their boss.
Now that the scene is set, they seem to have reached the perfect point in the conversation such that if someone were to walk into the room just then they would be able to quickly grasp the topic being discussed, and the positions of both those present. Gerald spoke first, “So what you’re saying is you need permission to-”
“To go back to the life of John Wilson, and make sure things don’t get even more screwed up than they already have been! I just want to do my flipping job here!”, the second person—whose name was Autumn, although no one called them that, instead using their preferred last name—interrupted, the words flowing out of them in a way that every author wishes that they would when they need to finish tapping out that story and meet their deadline.
Gerald frowned. Clearly he (like most people) didn’t enjoy being interrupted, much less with information that he already knew. “Tomothy, you’ve already gone over this. You want to head in, because you think that this killer you’ve been tracking throughout the…” and here he glanced down, making a show of referencing a number that was still fresh in his memory (although he wanted to check that his memory was correct) from one of the papers that had been straightened out to line up with the edge of the table as he spoke. Tomothy started to reach towards the papers, an aborted gesture that was perhaps going to start off another rushed explanation, words that they seemed to need to get out, to share, to have heard.
“Throughout various millennia,” Gerald eventually settled on, not finding the information easily in the clumsily organized but aesthetically pleasing stacks. Tomothy’s hand twitched again, wanting to reach out and fill in the blanks, but they held themself back with the knowledge that in this case information for their case would actually hinder it. “So you think that you should be sent back to this John Wilson, around ‘the middle of the year they called 1910’, in order to stop this murderer that you think is targeting him next?”
Tomothy nodded sharply, but before they could open their mouth to continue pleading their case Gerald pressed a button under the table and the door slid open. “You have my full permission to go, but read through our resources on this Mr. Wilson before you do. I’m well aware of your record, so I have no reason to believe that you will not approach this professionally, and choose to take actions that you know will not irreparably damage anything. The file will be ready for you.”
Tomothy exited the room, and strode down the brightly lit hallway back to another, identical looking, brightly lit room. Despite their obvious earlier enthusiasm, they weren’t in a rush.
---
One woman was seated in a brightly lit room, the white walls washing out the definition of the corners while the light blue tint that had ubiquitously become known as the calling card of holograms tinted the room into reality. The woman had darker hair than Gerald and brighter hair than Tomothy, and was reading text off of one of the holograms to Tomothy, who was hovering awkwardly near the desk which did not have a second chair at it.
“Well you certainly know how to pick ‘em, don’t you. They’re…” and here she paused for a moment, not due to a lack of understanding of the information that she was reading, or a desire to condense it, but an ingrained need to milk the information she had for every little bit of drama possible. “They’re a little out there, so don’t plan on bein’ able to figure out shit from what he gives ya. I mean looking at the records here he’s a notorious eccentric, obsessed with obscure forms of transportation and unless you think that’s why he’s a target...”
“It might very well be, how else would the killer have heard of him?” Tomothy pointed out. The woman paused (and Tomothy paused, and realized in the silence that he did not know the woman’s name), thinking over this fact for a moment, before deciding to move on.
“So your cover is that you’re gonna be renting the spare room that he’s got, and we’ve supplied you with transportation and funds as always to make your journey as painless and unnoticed as possible,” she spoke in an intentionally inflectionless tone, making the scripted nature of her speech clear. “We’re giving you a Ford Model T, which was pretty much the car that everyone wanted and most people of means could get at the time, so it shouldn’t really blow your cover as long as you say that you went a little over budget in the rush for the car and need to get a little bit cheaper living. Even if you aren’t driving much, you’ll still need to get gas and such, and new technology means other drivers might not be as educated as to how to safely use their vehicles, so plan out your trips carefully and take care to not get into any accidents. No offroading, the cars weren’t designed for that, and they won’t work as well if the paths are slippery with ice.” She paused in her rant, glancing up to check over the outfit that Tomothy had donned as she spoke, and looked over it quickly for any obvious flaws.
“You’re gonna have to ditch the top hat, it’s too high class, unless it’s from your shopping spree in which case it stays in the car, shows that you’re enjoying the new luxury.” Tomothy nodded and reluctantly removed the hat, placing it into a nearby box which they set near the door with the other crates of outgoing supplies. The boxes promptly vanished, and by the time Tomothy had turned to the woman in surprise she was already beckoning him out of the door.
“I know we’ve all got a horrifically skewed sense of time, but you need to get to transportation now. You’re scheduled to return in around 10 minutes, I don’t know who decided to cut it this close but I’m sure we can figure out who it was on your return.”
She was still talking by the time Tomothy went out the door. She quickly returned to her holograms and wiped all records of her booking Tomothy’s return. Ten minutes later, she directed him to IT for help figuring out why the system for logging the bookings of returns had mysteriously lost his information.
---
Over the course of the conversation Tomothy began to learn that as long as you ignored his eccentricities, Mr Wilson (“John to my friends”) was a perfectly normal man for the time. Of course by Tomothy’s standards, there were many things odd about him, but Tomothy’s standards would be odd if Gerald was asked to judge them, so that really was a non statement. When they eventually got around to asking him about any potential offspring, Tomothy realized that all the posters had in fact been created by Mr Wilson (“John to my friends”) himself, as well as the fact that he was unemployed (coasting on an inherited fortune) and spent all his free time researching these various forms of transportation with the intent of one day compiling a book.
---
Although Tomothy’s cover included a fictional day job that forced him out of the house for most of the day, they did most of his actual work when home. They had a notebook and pencil that they had purchased from a local store which they were using to note down possible ideas as to why John was being targeted. Perhaps he would grow up to do something that would change the timeline (crossed out when a quick question to the woman, who they had taken to referring to as Missy in their head, revealed that this was not the case), or maybe he would have children that would grow up to do something (a few quick conversations with John dissuaded that notion rather quickly). The most likely notions at the moment were either that it was random, in which case there was nothing for Tomothy to do, that it was revenge for John wasting his life in some way, by not focusing on what he was doing but instead living in history (or perhaps just for having the gall to follow his dreams), or another option.
The option that Tomothy hoped for was not any of those. They hoped that John somehow knew something that would expose the criminal, although Tomothy had no idea what it could be, unless it was the fact that the cranks that powered the movement of Da Vinci's tank (which were apparently turned by the power of four strong men in order to get the vehicle moving) were set in opposite directions according to the original sketch, so it would likely never have been able to get anywhere. Or maybe that if one were to take the train from Seattle to Chicago in 1910 it would cost $65.00. Or maybe the murderer needed to hide the fact that a traveler from Chicago to Boston would need to plan for the trip to take 21 hours and 20 minutes if they took the limited stop train, and closer to 48 hours if they took a cheaper train that made more stops.
---
It wasn’t a well lit room, and no one was seated in it. Only if one looked very carefully, with a specific preconstructed image in mind, could they realize that there was a woman present, although she wasn’t seated. Through the differences between this room and most rooms that normal people find themselves in, one could easily surmise that the owner of this room was either an emo, the serial killer that Tomothy was chasing, or both. She was both.
In the corner of the room, a pair of stilts were leaned against the wall.
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