Paying Back Potion Debt [Bell]

"Things just... got out of hand. People live longer, healthier lives. Technology makes child rearing easier to an extent, and educating those same kids is even easier. Even when people have less kids, there are still more people doing it, and for longer. Less kids all at once, but more over the course of a lifetime."

Orion had resigned himself to attempt to be Bell's tour guide in his time, but even he was starting to feel it weight down on him. His brain found it quite stimulating to distillate all that he knew of his own complex world into short summaries for her, but her questions were nonstop and even a good thing can get tiring after a while. Hopefully the lunch would give them some time to relax. Meanwhile, he leaned back in his seat and idly rubbed her shoulder. He just needed to touch her for his own comfort.

Her thoughts of using magic, however, made him frown slightly. He took no slight against his own time. He knew full well they were kind of nuts, as was any period in history. The way Bell worded it, however, was prime material for creating an existential crisis.

"Yeah... But when you're desperate, you do desperate things. I suppose I'll just have to live with an inevitable extinction or something. Maybe I'll be dead before then..."

There was only a hint of resignation in his voice, as if he had already come to familiar terms with the idea, or that the possibility seem far enough away to not worry him too much.

The car lead them to a high rise apartment building, entering through a docking port in the side of the building that lead to a large staging area that would have looked similar to a subway station, where other people were arriving and departing in their own cars. After they exited, the car did its auto-piloting thing again and sped off to park. From there, it was only a short walk and elevator ride to his apartment door.

"Well, here we are~ Don't mind the mess."

For once, there was nothing futurisitc about the door. It didn't even slide, it worked like a regular door. It lead into a decently-sized apartment with a cozy ultra-modern look to it. It was sleek and sanitary, almost like living in an Apple show room. The mess Orion spoke of were numerous piles of old books on tables and furniture and on the floor. Several electronic tablets were stacked up as well. On the far side of the apartment was a window-wall that looked over the city, and brought some much needed light in. A desk sat near the window-wall, nearly covered in various medicine bottles, empty and full.

"You can move whatever is on the couch and make yourself at home. I'll set up everything in the kitchen in a minute."

The reason Bell could not read most of the text in the books that were lying around were because they were primarily history books. Even far in the future, books still had some place in society even though most media had transferred to electronic form. The oldest books were the most readable, since they were closer to Bell's time, or even covered histories she was already familiar with.

In an analogy, books in Orion's time were like old vinyl records in Bell's time, an outdated mode of recording that still stuck around because some people thought it carried the text better. Some intellectuals also thought that recording history in particular in written form was a better preservation method than purely all digital.

For once, Orion did not have a response for Bell's suggestion that he go back and screw around with history to change the future. It was a different kind of silence too. There was a certain solemnness to his movement in the kitchen that seemed more down than usual. It seemed to fade away when she asked about magic.

"Other than the stuff I've seen with you and the Academy? Not much I suppose. And even then... It's hard to tell when something is Magic magic, or just... mutant powers or some other supernatural ability...

Alright. So you wanna see how I cook, huh? Well, I can show you the future-y way or the normal way."

He moved aside to show her that he had laid out some very familiar looking ingredients and utensils on his counter. Judging by what he had out, it seemed like he was intending to make some kind of pasta dish. On the other side of him was an appliance that looked like a combination microwave/toaster-on-its-side.

"Not even the future can change the fact that people still cook and prepare food like you've always done. People are a lot more touchy when it comes to things they eat than a lot of the other crap you've seen about my time.

But we still have this guy right here: Food Synthesizer. Actually really new even in my time. Same deal as the fabricators from earlier, but with organic material. First commercial line of these things too."

"Yeah. We have Vertical Farms. Giant hollow towers with multiple tiers on the inside that grow stuff or raise animals. Saves land space somewhat. But everything is genetically modified to hell and back. 'Organic' in this time pretty much just means it's not grown in a Vertical Farm, and that's about it."

Bell's enthusiasm for the gadgets of his time made him smile, especially when it came to the Food Synthesizer. Even he was a little excited about that particular device. He had not had the chance to use it since he bought it. But he was hungry for real food(or whatever passed for it in his time) and he started cooking up some nice pasta for the two of them while Bell played with her new toys.

Her Fabricator toy came in a few, easy to snap together pieces. If she had any experience with children's play sets or large toys, she would have no problem putting it all together from the manual alone. The manual also showed her how to craft the sub-toys using the Fabricator itself. The raw materials came in little cylindrical canisters that fit into several plugs on one side. The "blueprints" for various small toys were contained in plastic "chips" that were slotted into another port. Doing so would cause a small holographic screen to display, where she could customize the toy to a degree before activating it. And of course, the whole thing was a bright colorful affair meant for children.

While the two of them were messing with their respective stuff, the window wall near Bell would make a soft, pleasant ding tone and display a message on itself. The window wall also apparently had another function as a screen. The message was a simply worded reminder that read "Take medicine. Three pills."

"You likin' your new toy, honey? Lunch will be ready soon."

Orion had apparently missed the chime of the reminder.

"Um... Maybe you should just let me handle that. I appreciate the thought though."

While Bell was stunned with the number of medicine bottles on full display on his desk, Orion had walked over to serve their lunch on the nearby table. From a visual stand point, the pasta and sauce he served was indistinguishable from any other similar dish from Bell's time. It looked good nonetheless. It was evidence to Orion's cooking ability, which Bell had not seen before.

He walked up next to Bell and patted her shoulder as he too approached the desk and started popping open bottles to retrieve pills in a manner that suggested that the motions were very familiar and routine to him. As he popped out the last pill, he looked at them and then at Bell. He sighed.

"... Y'know what? You're too smart of a woman to have to deal with this coyness. You got questions about me in particular, right? And the medicine probably doesn't help much. So how about I just come clean about it over lunch?"

Orion sounded more exasperated than embarrassed or sad. He had been keeping things from Bell since they had met, for both personal and business reasons. But not long after they met did he realize that there was really no hiding things from her, and she was only humoring him. As he looked at his pills, he wanted to end the game and just lay it all out on the table.

Orion had not even bothered taking the pills with water. He took them straight up and swallowed them before joining Bell at the table. He did, however, get a mouthful of pasta down his throat before he looked like he was ready to start talking. There was another momentary pause as he stared at his plate and twirled his fork, looking for words. When he did look up at Bell, he looked quite serious.

"So... Lets start with the pills. They're basically supplements. They keep my body functioning normally and ward off deterioration because I am not natural. Without the pills, I would visibly start falling apart at whatever seams I have.

I'm an artificial human. Grown in a tube, first a small one then moved to a big one, from a small batch of artificially grown human cells. That's why I didn't have a childhood, Bell. When I was finished... growing, I came out as you see me now."

Using his glove, Orion darkened the room slightly and made the window wall show an image on screen. It was a three dimensional rendering of a large cylindrical glass container with various small robot arms on the inside, protruding from the top and bottom. A generic human shape was bobbing in the center of it.

"Why? Because an artificial human, with absolutely zero genetic or biological connection to the past, is the safest bet for time travel. With no blood line to mess with, we have the lowest risk of even accidentally causing a paradox, like the grandfather paradox.

Hell, even the method with which we're made is set up to be fool proof. The process if automated so we can't not cause our creators to not exist. And there's multiple creators spread out through out the past, who even if we did cease the existence of one or a few of them, there would be others to build it and grow me."

The screen followed his words with illustrations. First, showing a diagram of the grandfather paradox, wherein a time traveler would go back in time and kill their own grandfather before the father was conceived therefore negating the time traveler's very existence. Then it showed various clips of the robot arms manipulating cellular matter, and then showing a rough flow chart of how and whom would make the machine itself.

"And I suppose that it also explains my behavior, now that I think about it. I was born like this, never given a real life outside of training and conditioning until I started on the job. You and Delise were pretty much my first...s, both in terms of sex and relationships...."