The Week in Stories: Strange Attractors

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Episode 5: "Forking Paths"

Don't drink the frog juice! Or do, I'm not your mother.

Yes, I missed Episode 4. I tried to sit down and write it, but it was a hell of a summer, and by the time I sat down to take a crack, I'd forgotten half of the session. Highlights: Gerald was erased from most people's memories, and took a trip to Libertalia, met an older Peter-turned-pirate, and drank some golden frog juice that took him on a trip to alternate timelines. And when threatened with "recalibration" by TimeWatch, Jack and Peter said "fuck no" and took off, pursued by Millie.

(Below is likely all out of order, as we kept skipping from story to story, and I know I've combined some scenes.)

The episode opened with Walter walking through Greenwich Village in the middle of the day, and, apparently on a whim, entering a gay bar. It was quiet, but when he approached the bartender, the man told him that the person he was meeting was already over in one of the booths. This surprised Walter, as he had never been in this bar before.

Waiting for him in the booth was Robert Heinlein, with two glasses of whatever Walter had been about to order sitting in front of him. Heinlein observed that when he'd joined up, a place like this would have been seen as a security risk. But now it was the safest place to meet up. Heinlein disclosed some doubts about what the Admonitories overseeing TimeWatch from the future wanted.

Walter tried to pump Heinlein for information about his parents and what had happened to his father, Heinrich. Heinlein admitted that he'd been the one who reported Heinrich, and pulled out a few photos of Walter meeting with Heinrich in 1943. Couldn't Walter have at least cut his hair when he went back to meet with his father? At the time, Heinlein had only seen a man with bushy hair and long sideburns, and assumed he was a Communist agent, and that Heinrich had been compromised.

Heinlein also dropped some hints that might seem to suggest that Heinrich was hard at work on Project Rainbow around the time Walter was supposed to have been conceived, and Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard were around his mother an awful lot more....

Heinlein and his wife recalibrating something, I figure

In the meantime, they needed to discuss the fact that TimeWatch wanted to recalibrate Walter, and we got a little more detail as to what that means. When paradox mounted up too far, TimeWatch would go back to a version of Walter from this time period, and use that to replace the present Walter. The question was whether or not the deletion of the present Walter was incidental, due to changing the timeline, or active. Like, murder.

(I am sort of terrified by how much this would not bother Millie. Doesn't say good things for her emotional state, if having her present self and part of her memories deleted doesn't sound like the worst idea in the world.)

At any rate, Heinlein proposed that they could either pretend to have recalibrated Walter, or actually create the alternate Walter and have two Walters running around time. Walter seemed to prefer the first option, and they continued planning. Heinlein thought he could send Walter to the Royal timeline, to track down this Gerald person that Heinlein had no memory of.

Meanwhile, we moved to where Jack, Peter, and Millie had jumped. It was Chiba City, 2052, and the world around the three looked like a cross between Neuromancer and Blade Runner. Small stalls, people cooking their own circuit boards, bad smells, and a giant billboard with L. Ron Hubbard/The Comte de St. Germain on it advertising emigration via "Clear."  Just about the first thing Jack noticed was a RazorGirl on a motorcycle. And just about that time, the RazorGirl noticed him, too.

Jack dashed through the stalls, trying to get away, only to find another RazorGirl waiting for him. As he looked for a way out, a small bubble car pulled up beside him, and a man leaned out and told Jack to jump in. Jack took the driver's side, and found that the controls were similar to an NES. The man urged him to drive them away, pronto. Jack realized that the man was an older version of himself, dressed pretty much exactly the same.

Meanwhile, the first RazorGirl came right at Peter and Millie with her motorbike. Peter managed to catch her in the stomach with his fist, while Millie grabbed a piece of metal and stuck it in the spokes of the front wheel, sending the woman and her bike flying. Jack finally got the basic hang of the car, and backed it up to where Millie and Peter were, urging them to get in. There really wasn't enough room, but they all got very snug.

However, Jack didn't manage to find the forward button, and they continued to rocket backwards through the market, mowing down stalls as they went. Eventually, he got control, found forward, and off they went.

We then jumped to where Gerald was, in Egypt in the shadow of the Sphinx. A huge zeppelin with the Union Jack on its side darkened the sky above him. This all looked remarkably like his own lost timeline (codename: Royal). He stumbled into the city, finding a hotel and entering. A dog ran up to him, ecstatic. It was his old dog, Balthazar. Suddenly, he remembered this day. It was the day he'd met his older self, and his older self had stolen his time machine and his dog!

And at that moment, his younger self came around the corner, and the dog went back and forth in an ecstasy of delight and confusion. After recognizing what was happening, the older Gerald began to exhort the younger Gerald to give up time travel altogether, saying it was far too dangerous. The younger Gerald agreed, saying that it needed to be kept in the strict control of the British Empire, and that he'd already started an organization of trustworthy blokes to control it: TimeWatch.

Gerald shouted at his younger self not to be a fool. He had no idea the lizard people he was risking letting lose on the world! His younger self stared at him, evidently convinced his older self had lost it. That was not helped as Gerald tried to tell younger self about his golden frog juice experiences.

Younger Gerald suggested that Gerald make the timeline-hopping changes to his time machine, then go home to Britain for a long rest cure, leaving the multiverse in the capable hands of good, solid Brits. Gerald was furious at the obtuseness of his younger self, and abruptly knocked himself out. He called Balthazar and headed for the time machine.

Meanwhile, back in Chiba City, the group had pulled up to a houseboat in the harbour. The air was rank and the water sullied by cadmium slicks. Jack went down into the houseboat with his younger self, while Millie and Peter stayed abovedecks. Downstairs, older Jack tried to talk to Jack about the choices he was going to make, and that he remembered this meeting.

Abovedecks, Millie wanted to know what Peter was going to do now, her hand hovering near her lasergun. He said that he didn't know, but he wasn't up for "recalibration," whatever that was. Millie asked him why not, wondering why he didn't trust TimeWatch. Why would he?, Peter retorted. No one knew why they were doing what they were doing. Making history a better place, Millie asserted.

Peter tried to shake Millie's blind (and somewhat unreasonable) faith in TimeWatch, but she dug in her heels. He said that TimeWatch must have promised her something pretty good, to get this kind of loyalty. Or to her brother. Millie was struck speechless as the memory of the first time she'd lost Miles in a murder-suicide hit her again, and the knowledge that she had found a new version of Miles, but couldn't risk talking to him. When she found her voice, she said that she hadn't gotten anything from TimeWatch. That was why she trusted them - they hadn't promised her anything good, or given her any false promises. They'd asked her to do things that hurt, and not sugarcoated them.

She accused Peter of only looking out for himself, and Peter seemed nonplussed that she thought there was another way that made any sense. He wasn't out to hurt people, but you had to look out for yourself at the end of the day. Millie disagreed. Peter promised not to mention her brother to anyone, and Millie hesitated before demanding Peter's autochron. He could do whatever he wanted to himself in 2052, but she wasn't going to let him run amok through history. He gave it to her without hesitation (but the audience could see that he gave her a fake and kept the real one.)

Just then, an expensive yacht pulled up through the nasty waters of the harbour, another older Jack on the prow, dressed much more slickly and surrounded by armed RazorGirls. He shouted for Jack and Jack to come out. Downstairs, older grubby Jack pulled out a gun and said that he'd intended to shoot younger Jack, but he remembered this meeting, and wasn't able to make himself do it. Younger Jack went above decks, and a couple of the RazorGirls hauled older grubby Jack away. Older slick Jack greeted his younger self, saying this was the world they'd built, and that it was all Peter's plan, the long con. Older Jack pointed at the poster of L. Ron Hubbard/Comte de St. Germain, saying it was all about power.

Younger Jack talked to his older slick self, and older slick Jack kept showing off his lifestyle, inviting younger Jack to join him. Jack demurred, and that's when older slick Jack also pulled out a gun and said that he didn't remember this meeting, so he was free to kill younger Jack without affecting this timeline they'd created.

Millie, having been stewing about her argument with Peter and her own need to believe she was doing the right thing, grabbed Peter's arm, saying that if he didn't believe TimeWatch was doing everything for a reason, she'd show him. They'd go to the far future and see what the future the Admonitories was building was. She invited Jack to come along, and he agreed quickly, not really wanting to get shot. They jumped away....