Paying Back Potion Debt [Bell]

Critical

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"Yeah, you've got the right idea."

Orion helped Bell repack her potions, then held her hand as they descended the platform. The scientists that were not busy chattering among themselves were at the ready with the sensor wands and scanners, waiting for Orion to remove himself from her side so that they could scan Bell.

"I'm glad you're handling all this so well, by the way."

He held her bag and put her arms out to her side before stepping back. The scientists immediately started scanning her from head to toe with various instruments. Nothing actually touched her, but there were quite a few of them doing their jobs all around her. Orion stood as close as he could to her without bothering the scientists, and talked to Bell to keep her informed and occupied.

"Anyway, there's actually a reason you can't understand them, or why you weren't able to read any of my screens back in the Ship.

My glove has another function that's been working the entire time since I came back to your time. We'll just call is a 'sensory scrambler'. It's like a filter that scrambles anything that would have put my true origin in danger to anyone that wasn't me or from this time. Y'know, protecting the time stream and all that."

He tapped his glove to show her.

"It has its limits of course. I mean, you saw my Ship and have been in it. It mostly scrambled audio and some visual things.

But since you're here, I'm going to turn it down and loosen the restrictions. You'll be able to converse and hear normally, but it'll still hide some key things that have deemed 'dangerous' to reveal to you. Mostly indicators of the exact date, certain events, and full names."

As Orion turned down the filter, the indecipherable speech of the scientists began to smooth out and gain clarity until they were talking in a very recognizable language. On the wall, writing that seemingly had not been there before came into view, mostly warnings and hazard signs pertaining to the time machine that they had come through.

The scientists themselves were now clearly heard either reporting back data from their scans or discussing the data. One person was talking about how the 'dog' must have been in some heat to bring back a girl.

"So how are you feeling? Hearing everything okay?"
 
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Apple Magpie

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“You do realize I can handle myself, right?” She didn’t sound particularly offended, but it was obvious she was scolding him a little. “I mean, really, what sort of reaction did you expect me to have? I already knew you were from the future. ‘Sides, I haven’t even seen the outside world yet.” If anything here was going to shock her, it was going to be the way the world changed, not the fact that there were research institutions in it.

Even if they were really fucking kickass.

She looked at the scientists’ instruments with curiosity, but scowled when Orion mentioned just why she couldn’t understand them. “Dammit! And here I thought you had some sort of future space-language or something. I feel like I’ve been duped.”

She couldn’t help but be a little cranky that her experiences had been… messed with, but there was nothing she could do. To be honest, screwing up the time stream didn’t feel like a big deal to her, but if they caused some sort of paradox or something she supposed it would be a problem. “What the hell were you doing in our time anyways? You’re bound to have screwed with something already, you know. Heck, maybe someone who was supposed to have a certain pair of babies fell in love with you and fucked everything up already.”

She grumbled a little, but turned her attention to the new conversations she could hear, and her scowl evened out. “English hasn’t changed much over the years, has it. Which is weird, knowing that languages usually change pretty quickly…” Of course, maybe she just hadn’t heard enough from normal people to be sure. Scientists had a different sort of lingo to be sure, but the gears were still turning in her head.

Though they stopped abruptly when she heard a little comment in the background. “Hey. Hey, you.” She looked coolly towards the person who’d mentioned them. “I think we’re all aware that there’s a delicate balance here. And with that in mind, maybe you shouldn’t be pissing off the person who could probably break it with a little bit of effort, especially when she’s a grown woman who got into your ‘dog’s’ good books by breaking a demon’s thrall.” Granted, Orion had almost literally been asking for it, but she still wanted her respect.
 
Critical

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"I'm sorry my time isn't giving the best of impressions. But it gets better! Promise!"

Orion either had not heard the "dog in heat" comment or chose to ignore it because he acted none the wiser as he approached Bell just as the scientists pulled away from her. Apparently their scanning had finished and they had little else to do with her. That is, until she mentioned breaking a demon's thrall.

They paused for a moment, looked at her, then began excited talking amongst themselves. Then they started to close in on her again in a bit of a scientific frenzy. Their questions muddled together but the gist of the questions seemed to be if she had evidence of the demon and if she could detail the process of breaking its thrall, using her own particular talents specifically. Orion cut them off and pulled Bell towards and exit.

"You got your scans and you can ask questions later! Miss Arabella is under my watch, and we are leaving."

He quickly lead her to an elevator and got them both in it.

"*whew* Alright, we got some private time, so I can just spill it to you.

Yes. This is 'future', and I am from it. I am a ranking member of a special private contractor that specializes in time travel. Time travel itself, for my time at least, is still a secret. Only I and a few others have traveled, and we're all looking for the same things: The source of magic."

Right on cue, the elevator came out of its solid wall shaft and entered a windowed one. Apparently the facility had been underground, and they were now rising high along a building. One of many towering buildings that could be seen from out the elevator. They were in a massive city with perfectly clean buildings and even lanes of flying cars and vehicles. The sky seemed clear and beautiful, glinting off the many polished surfaces and connecting bridges across the skyscrapers. A large object floated into view. It seemed to be an entire building, a normal sized one, on a platform, floating effortlessly through the air to dock at a prescribed location on a nearby building.

There was one thing to note though. The city may have been beautiful and not-dystopian-like, it clearly lacked any natural settings. Not a tree nor blade of grass could be seen outside of a few well-manicured parks or the occasional potted plant.

"You see, we need it, or some way to replicate it. The world's pretty nice, don't get me wrong, but we've long since realized we've screwed up in the field of Nature. And there's only so much Science can do. We need another way, a way that can seemingly bypass the laws of science and just... make stuff happen.

Stuff like your potions."
 
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“Aw, stop apologizing already! I’ll see it for myself, you got that – oh, hey, calm down!” Now, Bell had nothing against enthusiasm, but the mass of excited scientists eager to get a piece of her was a little too hard to follow, besides which she was still a little pissed off at the way they’d treated her. “Right then, Orion can tell you aaallll about it some other time, you got that?” She scooted after the man, eager to get a moment of quiet, and let out a relieved sigh as the elevator doors closed behind them. “’Miss Arabella’, huh. Sounds kind of weird coming from you.”

Orion was kind of a weird guy in general, though. Working for a private contractor, huh? And here she thought he was government or something. This was a lot… sketchier, particularly when he mentioned just what he was looking for.

She raised an eyebrow, but then her field of vision filled with light and a clear blue sky, and she turned her attention to the tall-ass buildings that went about as far as she could see. “Oh fuck, that’s really cool.” She couldn’t help but grin as a fucking building floated past them. Sure, she’d heard of floating islands before, but that was in the realm of the gods if anything – this sort of thing, made presumably by ordinary humans, was unheard of.

Orion’s words brought her back to reality. “I don’t know, man. If you’re looking for something that’ll fill the whole place with trees, you’re probably not going to find it. Have you considered just, I don’t know, waiting a few million years?”
 
Critical

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"Yeah. A million years. You think people in your time are impatient? Folks now will shoot themselves over a line longer than ten people. They want it now"

The elevator finally dinged at their destination and the doors slid open with a nice smooth woosh. The doors opened up into a palatial lobby, with smooth granite floors and a towering ceiling. Shiny pillars of metal held up the ceiling and several preserved machines were on display like art pieces, kept in glass displays. All sorts of people were walking about in business suits and formal attire. Some had their hands to their ears, presumably using the era's version of a cell phone.

"Alright. Main floor. We can get out of this dump from here."

He slipped his hand into Bell's and lead her through the lobby. On closer inspection, the displayed machines seemed to be of engines or reactors. The little plaques that described them would be Bell's first introduction to how the neural scrambler worked. She could read almost everything on them, such as the mention of one engine being the first prototype of a micro fusion reaction, but the parts that described who made it and when were just... unreadable.

"Now I brought you here not just to talk shop, but to also... to show you around and, of course, pay back the debt by, maybe, taking you on a nice date..."

The nervous smile on his face told all.

"Y'know, if you want. I just really want you to enjoy yourself. At least while I can sneak you around before the brass gets on my ass."
 
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Apple Magpie

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“Gods forbid a gal be patient. I’m certainly not going to be of any help to those pricks, I can say that much. How’d you get mixed up in that bunch?” He certainly didn’t seem to take his job very seriously.

“Nice place you got here.” She looked around the room with a touch of admiration – perhaps it wasn’t the most futuristic room in the world, but Bell had never had that much money, and so she didn’t get mixed up in pricey places. “As dumps go, this isn’t half bad.”

Even after he held her hand, her interest was a little bit less on him and a little bit more on the machines on display. Beautiful things, really. But even if she thought she had some claim as a scientist, she certainly wasn’t an engineer. Their intricacies were completely beyond her – and apparently, even were the plaques. “Props to you, whoever you are. Don’t I even get a vague range? Hundreds, thousands? No?”

It was her own personal grumblings rather than an honest question, so she was distracted easily enough when Orion spoke again. “A date?” She looked at him incredulously. “You aren’t honestly telling me you’re breaking the laws and time and pissing off your colleagues for a date?”

She stared at him for a good few seconds before her expression cracked and she patted him on the back, laughing all the while. She got a few odd looks, but she only snorted, still smiling when she managed to get ahold of herself. “Alright, I’m in. Where are we going?”
 
Critical

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For perhaps the first time during their time together, Orion looked a little sheepish in the face of Bell laughing at, or with, him. It did sound incredibly roundabout and foolish the way she worded it. Here he had been given the opportunity to time travel and had access to amazing technologies, and he was using it to try and impress a girl. It really did sound like he was wasting everyone's time and energy.

But Orion had buck up and just do it. He really was going to show Bell as many cool things as he could to pay back the potion debt, and he was also going to fulfill some of his obligations to the company. All at the same time.

"Well, the first thing we're going to do, is go for a ride."

Orion lead Bell out of the lobby area, using his glove as a pass at the security checkpoint right before the door. The checkpoint looked similar to a line of metal detectors, but no one had to stop and wait for the machine. Instead, the metal archways emitted a blue glowing field that everyone just walked through without stopping, unless they had a security pass.

On the outside, they stood on an immense walkway between their current building and another towering building. It was like a main street, except high in the air. Down the middle were the main walkways, paved in tasteful brick. On the edges were the same docking stations as the one they had seen the floating building attach to. Several buildings were already docked, and a few were coming and going. Meanwhile, Orion was tapping something on his glove, and watching the skies.

"I saw that you noticed the floating building on the elevator. These ones operate on a similar premise. We have these docking stations set up every where along the skyways and mega towers. Shops and restaurants and businesses of all kinds will fly around and dock where all the customers are. It's kind of like... a food truck or an ice cream truck, except with entire buildings.

It's actually pretty useful considering lots of people work and live high up in the towers."
 
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Bell walked along and absorbed all that she could, completely enraptured by her surroundings. Once they made it outside, she went straight for the edge of the walkway, staring down into the sky. Was there any particular reason they were up here? What had happened down there? Maybe nothing. Either way, she figured she wasn’t allowed to ask.

Floating buildings, huh… She snapped out of her fascinated haze and laughed. “That sounds wasteful as hell. And how do you go around finding things when they move like that? Doesn’t it get – confusing? Maps are right out.“ She must sound like a country bumpkin, but to be quite frank she was out of her league and she wanted to learn as much as she could without running into that neural scrambler thing.
 
Critical

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Some people stared at Bell looking over the edge of the skyway. Gawking about the heights of the skyways was a surefire way to show that you were not from around these parts. Most people brushed her off and let her be, while other turned their noses up at her in the grand old tradition of feeling superior to tourists. Even in the future, some things never changed.

"The technology to make it happen is relatively cheap now, and not everything is part of the floating building model. It's generally things that rely used to rely on surges of customers, either throughout the week or the day. Other businesses still stick to the stationary model."

Orion finished tapping on his glove, which now had a slowly pulsing light on it.

"And it's a good model. You think social media and convenience culture are everywhere in your time? It's pretty much standard now. People share EVERYTHING throughout the day, actively and otherwise. Any businesses that come to THEM, instead of the other way around, get loads more customers.

And here is our ride..."

And there it was, the very symbol of the Future, as it was defined in Bell's time: a flying car. It almost soundlessly flew out from somewhere beneath the skyway's level, rose above the two of them, then gently lowered itself to a sport nearby. The only sound it made was an almost inaudible hum that was felt more than heard. It looked pretty similar to any fancy two-seater cars from Bell's time. But instead of wheels, there were rounded portions of the body that seemed to be core elements of whatever hover technology that had become commonplace in Orion's time. It was nazy blue in color.

Ever the gentlemen, Orion held the door open for Bell, The interior would not have been out of place in any luxury car she knew. The real differences were in the front panels and dashboard. Instead of any buttons or knobs, it was one screen that mostly conformed to the curve of the dash in the center, as was the meter panel on the driver's side. The only real recognizable parts were the wheel, the pedals, and the stick.

"So whaddya think? Not bad for what is essentially a soldier's pay, huh?"
 
A

Apple Magpie

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“Still sounds like bullshit to me. But hey, what do I know?” She scoffed. Maybe she was a cynic, but she had a bit of attachment to walking places like a normal person. Though normal was a little bit off whenever they were…

Well, she couldn’t complain about the flying car, at least. Bell had never had the luxury of being told stories about flying cars – her mother wasn’t one to fantasize about technology, and the sort of things her father rambled about were a little… smaller. He was more interested in the concept of a talking mouse than that of a flying car.

So it came as a complete surprise, and a complete delight. “Oh, this is beautiful.” A mischievous light came into her eyes as she settled in, leaning over to look at the screen.

“I couldn’t convince you to let me drive it, could I?“ She didn’t even have a driver’s license.
 
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