Paying Back Potion Debt [Bell]

Critical

Critical

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"Triple? Wow, honey. I might have to synthesize up some insulin for you too, if we're going that route. But a double and triple it is!"

It took a little bit of sorting through various menus and options for Orion to finally arrive at what they wanted. After placing a small plate in the main chamber of the alliance, he pressed the GO button and it started up. Through the window on the door, they could see that, much like a microwave, the plate spun slowly on a turn table. But unlike a microwave, no heat was generated.

Bell would be able to recognize the process as it was very similar to the way the toys and toy parts were made back in the shop. However, as this was the most recent version of that technology, it acted a little differently. No robot arms built their cupcakes. Instead, a half dozen... lasers(?) situated around the compartment shot out in rapidly oscillating patterns. Where the "lasers" landed, a bit of cupcake appeared. The whole process looked like a pair of chocolate cupcakes being printed out of thin air, whole and ready to eat.

The entire process took about two minutes, and it finished with a familiar DING. Orion retrieved the plate and held out the results: two delicious-looking chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing swirled perfectly on top. Bell's triple even had individual chocolate sprinkles on it.

"Damn. These look good..."

Just a little skeptical, Orion gingerly picked his up and gave it a tentative squeeze. Despite the plate being the same temperature, the cupcakes felt pleasantly warm, as if they had just been baked.

"Feels like cake. Smells like it too. Well... For science!"

He tried to get Bell to give a toast before biting into his dessert. He was pleasantly surprised to find it that it tasted delicious! Just like chocolate. The cake was moist and fluffy, and the icing was rich. However, there was one thing he noted, and it was very subtle. Biting into it, Orion felt just the tiniest amount of foreign resistance that neither cake nor icing should have, as if the entire thing was one solid piece that had been cut from a larger single block of... something.

"Hm. Very nice if you ask me. How's yours?"
 
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Apple Magpie

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May 6, 2014
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If it hadn’t been Orion’s machine, her hands would already be in this thing. Sure, she might lose a finger or two, but it sure would be worth a chance to see what the hell was going on here.

Okay, maybe she could poke around with a stick first and not lose a hand for no reason. Either way, Bell was rapt for the full two minutes, and if Orion said anything about it she would have shooshed him with a finger right in the face.

When the cupcakes came out, Bell was delighted to see hers was visibly more chocolatey than his. (Also, that they looked and smelled edible.) Orion was skeptical, but Bell was terribly pleased. The thing could have tasted like beef jerky and she would have been impressed. Actually, that might be even more impressive.

She’d almost stuck her finger into the icing already when Orion tried to toast her, and she hastily raised her cupcake to him before digging in.

Mm. Well, it was sugary and artificial and weird, like most cupcakes. This amount of sugar was kind of out there, really, and she knew it. “It’s a cupcake,” she said, her mouth still a little full. “Does this have, like, actual flour and such in it? If you look at it with a microscope?”
 
Critical

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"Hmmm... I have no idea actually."

As if he could see the flour himself, Orion peered very closely at his cupcake.

Staring so closely at the chocolate cupcake almost turned into a bad decision when a loud ringing sound emitted from the window wall, making Orion flinch and nearly smash the cupcake into his own face. After fumbling with his dessert for a moment, and hastily setting it down on the counter, Orion rushed over to the window wall, straightened his uniform, and stood up straight and stiff.

"A-Answer!"

The ringing stopped and a waveform appeared on the window wall, which seemed to relieve Orion until a voice started coming through. It was a deep, gruff voice, commanding and authoritative.

"Traveler!"

Orion saluted the voice.

"Sir! Here! Sir!"

"What are you doing? Give me a sitrep now!"

"J-Just showing around the girl I brought back with me, sir!"

"In your apartment? Traveler, if you're going to get your dick wet, do it on your own time and not with the subject of the program!

"S-Sir--"

Orion sheepishly glanced over at Bell, then looked away.

"And I need not remind you that you can't impregnate a female even you wanted to, right?"

"N-No, Sir..."

"Good. Now finish getting your rocks off and bring her back ASAP. We want samples and records of her potions, then you're taking her back."

"Sir. Yes, Sir."

With that, the waveform abruptly disappeared the call ended, leaving Orion to slump his shoulders slightly and sigh while he looked at the ground, embarrassed and exasperated.

"Sorry you had to hear that, Bell..."
 
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Apple Magpie

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“You didn’t search it up beforehand? Man, how disappointing. You should’ve.”

Surprisingly, Bell was less startled by the window noise than Orion was. It was unusual, for sure, but she’d become accustomed to things being unusual around here, so it just wasn’t as big of a deal. She munched silently on her cupcake as Orion fumbled over himself.

When she was done she leaned back against the wall and listened to their conversations. Orion really was treated like shit, wasn’t he? A wonder he was still as peppy as he was having to deal with this sort of crap all the time.

She scraped whatever she could get off the wrapper and then began to fold it idly, giving her hands something to do so she wouldn’t feel the need to punch a window in the face.

She only looked up again at her name. “…Naw, the one who people should be apologizing to should be you. Still…”

“All I did was show them a little light show and now I’m the subject of the program? Damn.” Of course, there was the chance that Orion had brought her here with that purpose, but she wasn’t willing to throw around accusations yet. “What happens if I say no?”
 
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Treated like shit was an apt description of Orion, at least when it concerned his superior officer, his handler. Within and outside outside of the Company, Orion was like any other person walking the street or showing up for work. To the vast majority of people, he was another random guy. But to those he spent the most time with, and the people he had to report to, Orion was practically on the same tier as robot drones and service dogs. Some of the scientists tried pushing for better treatment of him, which made some headway and resulted in most of his freedoms outside the building, but most were, well, still content on calling him "dog". Even those that wanted the best for him still treated him more like an adopted pet than a real person.

And it went without saying that his handler was the worst offender. When he wasn't treating Orion like an animal to be ordered, he was treating him like a dumb child--such as when he felt the need to reiterate something very personal about Orion's anatomy that had no reason to be repeated other than to put Orion down.

"Nah. It'll be okay. They've always treated me like this. I'm used to it."

His tone of voice would be instantly familiar to anyone who has heard a person cover up their own pain. There was an undercurrent of resignation as he tried to sound confident, as if his handler's word didn't pierce right through his heart.

"I've mentioned you in the reports I've had to make while staying in your time. That's how you're 'part of the program'. He just means that you're knowledge is of interest and, while you're here, they would like to pluck your brain. Figuratively. Even though I specifically put the request in for this to be OFF time..."

He grumbled something about his superiors ignoring his requests again.

"I can say that you'll be safe from harm with certainty. They wouldn't risk harming the time stream by maiming or killing you. But since the project is secret and, y'know, they're a big mega-corp, they'll probably do other things to get something out of you. Then wipe your short term memory before dumping you back in your own time.

Like when people claim to be abducted by aliens and they lose time."

Orion would not have surprised if some of those claims were actually true, and it was just his Company pulling the stunt.

"My suggestion? Give 'em a potion or two to analyze, a spell to try for themselves, and a book if you got one. That should be plenty."
 
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Apple Magpie

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“You’ve realized by this point that you’re a shit liar, right? Because you’re a shit liar. You. Shit liar. Don’t bother.” There was no particular harshness in her voice. Sort of like a light smack across the head to bring someone back to earth. “Nobody would enjoy something like that.”

“Aww, I feel so loved. Did you tell everyone how fantastic I am? You better have.” Of course he didn’t. If he was anything but professional, he would have been mocked even more. “Anyways, I imagine this means our little date is being cut short, huh.”

She scrunched up her nose at the thought of her memory being cut. “Dammit. That would really suck. Going straight to my weak points, huh…” There was no way she’d let that happen… at least if she had any say in it.

She sighed. “I can give them potions, but I can’t do spells and I don’t keep any magical literature on me. All I can tell them is how to be like, one with nature and spirituality.”
 
Critical

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"Yeah. You're right. I'm just... So used to taking their shit and pretending it doesn't bother me, or even liking it. What's the phrase? Grin and bear it?'

As much as it bummed Orion, Bell was right in the assumption that their date was going to have to be cut short. He thought about trying to circumvent the tracking on him somehow, or trying to ditch the handler for awhile to prolong the date. But then he thought about how much trouble he would be in, and what the residual punishment might be for Bell. Bell might have been safe from harsher punishments, but Orion was still unofficially not a person in the eyes of the Company, and therefore was subject to fewer protections under any law. Orion kept that fact to himself.

Trying to shake off the thought of getting punished for wanting to spend more time with Bell, Orion started packing up Bell's things to put in the car.

"The potions will probably be acceptable. If they want more, they technically don't have to wait long after sending you back through the portal. I could just portal back to a minute after we left this time. Cause, y'know, time is relative."

Looking out the window wall to the fading night sky, Orion was suddenly struck with an idea. He visibly perked up and excitedly hopped on over to Bell to take her hand while he carried her stuff in the other.

"Hey! How about we do something a little crazy before we go? To make up for... having a short date, and anything else. It'll be really cool, but a surprise."
 
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Apple Magpie

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“I’m not too up-to-date with my terms, but that sounds about right.“ Grin and bear it, huh. There’d been a lot of teasing in her childhood, but she’d reacted by kicking people in the shins. In Orion’s position, she might well have been killed. Or “terminated”, or however they tried to gloss over it.

“Sounds like a waste of a good potion to me, but if I have no choice…” Bell scowled, but there was nothing she could do. Her situation was still a hell of a lot better than Orion’s, anyways.

She was pondering this fact when Orion suddenly perked up. Considering his shitty situation, he was really good at cheering himself up, wasn’t he? Bell smiled and took Orion’s hand in his own. “Something ‘crazy’, huh?” She grinned. “You promise I’ll come out of it with all my limbs intact and I’ll give it a shot.”
 
Critical

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His hand squeezed her's happily, affectionately.

"I promise. But I think you'll find it to be worth a finger or two. Lets go!"

Bell's stuff under one arm, and Bell in the other hand, Orion took off from his apartment and to his car. Her stuff was put in the trunk and they were both out of the building in no time flat, with Orion driving. He was grinning big time and glancing over at Bell repeatedly, as if checking to see her reaction every few seconds. And she would definitely have stuff to react to because Orion was hurriedly pressing and switching a lot of things in the car, while talking to his computer and driving.

"Fully seal the passenger compartment... Pressurize... Divert power..."

Orion sounded at his most science-fiction-y as he beeped and booped this and that all around his control panel. Between his commands and his button presses, the car made small, different noises from what it usually made. The car seemed to whir a bit more and there was a tiny hissing noise as all the windows and doors seemed to shut even tighter.

At first they had been driving with the air lanes as normal, but then Orion took manual control and turned completely off the air lanes into open air where no other cars were flying. As he put both hands on the wheel, he looked and smiled at Bell.

"Now lean back and brace yourself. This is gonna be a ride."

He pulled back on the wheel and the car tilted backwards until it was pointing upward, then Orion punched it. The car curved upwards and ascended rapidly, pushing both of them back into their seats. The towering skyscrapers fell backwards behind them and the sky began to darkened ahead of them. The car rumbled and shook the higher they got until the blue entirely disappeared all around them. Then the car became eerily still and Bell would feel... lighter.

The car leveled-out and she would see it: the curve of the Earth and the sun setting over it. The windows darkened and filtered the harsh, pure sunlight and she would find that Orion had brought the car into low orbit. The Earth below was beautiful and sparkling with light from the mega cities below. Even in the harsh future where Nature was said to have been decimated, the Earth still seemed the same shade of blue and green. It was still beautiful.

"So?"

With the car stilled, Orion took his hand off the wheel and put it back in Bell's hand expectantly.

"Whaddya think of the view?"
 
A

Apple Magpie

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May 6, 2014
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It all seemed like some sort of surreal game. Orion was using a whole lot of words she didn’t know and doing a whole lot of things she didn’t understand, and frankly with her level of knowledge about technology and rockets in particular she couldn’t even try to follow along. A sci-fi fan might have expected what came next. Bell, who had very rarely come in contact with a television and had been far removed from the astronaut craze of youth, had never really considered the topic of “space”. It was a whole lot of nothing, and she was too busy dealing with all the interesting things on Earth to consider moving beyond it. (And frankly, when her dad had told her there was this place where people floated and big round hunks of rock spun around other big hunks of rock, she hadn’t really believed him, because he admitted that he’d never seen it himself and he didn’t have any of the details when she asked.)

“Alright, leaning.” Her general mood on this trip had been “bewildered”, mixed with “impressed” and “slightly concerned, but when the car began to tip it quickly became “highly concerned”. “Wait, what are we – “

Her eyes went a bit comically wide as the whole thing shot upwards, and there was a whole lot more pressure on her than she was accustomed to ever having, and more than that the sky was disappearing and – “Oh.”

She breathed in the darkness of space, and then remembered that oxygen was part of Earth’s atmosphere and that she shouldn’t really be able to, and then she decided she was very glad that none of the windows were open, and then she wondered what exactly her dad’s sources had been on this whole dark-expanse-of-nothing thing.

“Why hello there, sun.” They were only a couple kilometers up, but it looked so much larger from here. She took her time just watching the Earth as it was from above, the clouds and the countless lights and the vastness of the oceans, and then Orion distracted her again.

“This is fantastic,” she said, looking quite honestly impressed. “Can you go any further than this? Just out of – curiosity?”
 
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