Participants:
| Scene Title | Ill Omens Bring Bad Tidings, Part I |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Richard comes to visit Silas, and reveals the truth. |
| Date | June 15, 2021 |
The Second Star, the Pelago
On the southwestern edge of the Pelago, a relatively large, sturdy-looking yacht floats in the sunset sea, the name Second Star emblazoned across the aft. What looks to be a deck-mounted flamethrower sits at the prow — the Second Star's previous owner had been a dangerous pirate in the service of other dangerous men, and though she's been made over from stem to stern, not all evidence of her past as the Midsummer's Night has been erased. At the moment, the deck is empty… but while there's no sign of anyone moving about, the smoker sitting on deck suggests that someone is home. A gangplank extends downward from the deck of the ship to the dock.
“Silas!” The name called out as Richard stops at the edge of the gangplank; the rain’s stopped for the moment, at least, but he’s still got a poncho thrown on in case it comes back. “You home?”
Of course he’s home, but it’s impolite to board a ship without asking.
The call is met with a loud clunk from belowdecks. "I'm here," follows a moment later. "Come on up, have a seat. Watch out for the smoker; got an order in. That you, Richard?"
“Yep.” Richard tests the gangplank with a foot, then heads along up onto the deck, “It’s me.”
He steps around the smoker, glancing over the boat, “Nice ship you’ve got here.”
"Thanks," Silas says, coming up from below decks; he's wearing a worn apron with Raise the Steaks on the front of it and carrying a glass bottle full of what looks like barbecue sauce and a basting brush. "I killed some pirates and took it from 'em. Who, come to think of it, were also from Delphi, pretty sure; tread carefully when you're passing through there."
He sets the bottle and the brush down beside the smoker, then looks to Richard. "So. What brings you here?" For all that the question's asked casually, there's a hint of an edge to it.
“Saving the world. What else?”
The words aren’t entirely a joke, and there’s an edge of weariness to them as Richard leans against the ship’s wall, watching the other man tend to the smoker.
“In November,” he says quietly, “There’s gonna be a solar flare. Uluru’s been chewing away at the magnetosphere somehow…”
His head tilts back to look at the sky, “Intel says that there’s a guy in Alaska— Robyn’s dad— that was working on a technology to reinforce the magnetosphere. Intel seems to be good. If we don’t get it, and get it back, and if they can’t build it in time…”
He spreads his hands, as if showing an explosion. “Whole world’s charcoal.”
"Jesus," Silas exhales, eyes widening. He stands in silence for a moment, considering that. "Why didn't you…" he starts to ask, then pauses.
Silas's eyes narrow. When he speaks again, his tone is less shocked and more cautious, and he's scrutinizing Richard carefully. "Robyn very specifically didn't mention any details about what you were saving the world from. I thought that was funny at the time," he says carefully. "Why not?" he asks.
“She doesn’t trust you. Doesn’t trust… many people, honestly,” admits Richard with a little shake of his head, nose wrinkling up a bit, “Hell, she even only trusts me to an extent, I think.”
“I don’t blame her,” he admits quickly, as if to reassure the other man that he’s not speaking badly of the woman in question, “She’s been through a lot.”
Bringing one hand up, he rubs it over his lower face, glancing to the empty pier leading out to the boat. “There’s just— there’s some things they don’t need to know,” he says in more quiet tones, “Not because we don’t trust them. But because they don’t— matter. Not really.”
“See, even if we find everything and send the schematics back, we’ll need industry to build the system, orbital vehicles to launch things into orbit… it’ll be expensive, and complicated.”
"But she's also a pretty smart cookie," Silas says slowly, looking thoughtful. He continues to watch Richard as the other man speaks, and he doesn't miss the way Richard looks away when he's talking, or the way his hand comes up to hide his mouth. What Richard's saying makes sense… but there's still something he isn't saying.
Expensive. Complicated. Industry. Orbital vehicles. Things that we don't have here… so it 'doesn't matter. Not really,' Silas thinks… and he finds that he's starting to get a creeping feeling of unease. Kinda like when Chel let slip about the Ark's 'organic nuclear reactor'. He's willing to bet it's a pretty short list of people who knew about that. Why? Same reason — because it doesn't matter. Not really. The Ark needed power, or everyone died. Why burden everyone's conscience with that? Why risk someone getting conscientious and killing everyone?
Silas's frown deepens; he feels like there's something there, but whatever it is he's not quite getting it. "Industry and orbital vehicles… and we don't have much of that here," he says slowly. "They've got an airfield out in Hawai'i, but that's not the same as a space shuttle."
“You’re right.” Richard looks back at the other man, managing a faint but sad smile, “The Flooded Earth and the Virus Earth don’t have the infrastructure to do the work. The Wasteland’s a toss up, but probably too disorganized.”
He draws in a slow breath, “Would you rather the people here lived the next six months out dreading what’s coming, or let them be happily ignorant in the meantime? We don’t— we don’t even have a return plan, Silas.”
“This was probably a suicide mission.”
And there it is. That's why it doesn't matter. The virus, the killer robots, even the Flood — all of those had been the acts of mankind, breakpoints in human history. But not even Kazimir Volken had been able to command the sun. The flare was coming; all timelines would burn together.
The blood drains from Silas's face, leaving him ashen, and for a moment he teeters on the edge of despair.
Witness. An unending circle of death.
No, he thinks, his lips curling into a snarl. "No," he says aloud, looking back to Richard.
"Richard Cardinal," Silas says sternly. "You knock that shit off right now. Lemme tell you something — this world ended years ago. Our families, our homes, our countries, our goddamn lives were swept away and buried when the Flood came… or if not then, then when the Sentinel came through after. This whole goddamn world's been circlin' the drain ever since; we've been sailin' ships and living on tech we can't even make anymore, duct tapin' everything back together even while it's fallin' apart around us. Fightin' the sea every damn day for the right to survive to see another sunrise, knowing that someday we'd lose — either the sea'd get us or the Sentinel would."
Silas glares. "But the people in this world who're still alive are here because they're too goddamn stubborn to roll over and die. We're still hangin' on, goddammit… and if you've got no way back and death's loomin' ahead, that just means you're on the same footing as the rest of us. And we hang on to the end." Or eat a bullet, he thinks, but does not say. "A suicide mission? Maybe you thought so when you left. But if you keep fighting even when the end looks certain… sometimes you might find out that there's something new under the sun, after all," he says firmly, his mind flashing back to Else's words on the way back. Something new under the sun. Irony? Or something more? Silas briefly wonders, but he doesn't let himself get sidetracked; he's doing motivational speaking right now. Or trying to, at least. "Hell. I've been dead twice now and it ain't stuck yet."
He falls silent for a moment… then he sighs and takes a step back, slouching bonelessly into a chair. "Shit," he sighs, rubbing his hand over his forehead for a moment. "You got anyone in your crew who can break code? Or, uh… what's it called, where they read impressions off of objects?"
“I know you’ve been fighting,” Richard replies, making a sharp gesture with one hand as he frowns back at the other man, “And I’m not about to lay down— but I’m still not going to tell these people that one day the sun might just reach out and…”
He snaps his hand closed into a fist, then waves it off. “Better that they think there’s something to fight for.”
“I’m not giving up. Because even if it is a suicide mission— it might save Liz, and the kids, and everyone else I love,” he says firmly, “But the people here don’t need to know it might be one. Not giving up, just being realistic.”
A pause, then he asks, “No psychometers — what sort of code?”
Silas frowns back, but grimaces. "It's your call to make, I guess. I don't agree with it, but…" he grumbles, trailing off with a sour shrug.
He's glad to move on to the next subject. "Computer generated. Pages of the stuff."
“Possibly,” Richard’s brow furrows a little, “I might be able to— wrangle something, might be a bit complicated, but— I think it’s doable. If it’s important.”
One hand comes up to scratch under his chin, “What’s its importance?”
Silas doesn't respond to that immediately, but the expression on his face suggests he's in deep thought. "That's a fair question," he says, his gaze off in the middle distance. "A fair one, too," he admits.
He levers himself back to his feet. "The short answer is: I don't know. It's technically possible that it isn't," he admits.
Silas's gaze grows serious as he regards Richard. "But I think it's significant," he says solemnly. "Even if I'm not sure what its significance is, exactly, I'd bet this whole batch of barbecue that it is significant." He grins, or tries to; it's a bit closer to a rictus than an honest grin, though. "And given what you're telling me… there's not a lot of time left for it to, uh, be significant. Sooner cracked is better than too late, in this case."
Silas nods once… then his attention shifts to the smoker for a moment. He frowns, then glances back to Richard. "That's the short version. The longer version… is gonna require some explanation. A whole story's worth, come to that; I wasn't pullin' your leg when I said I didn't know what the significance was, but…" he trails off, shaking his head. How do you sell that looking back, everything seems like someone made a wild ass trick shot? he wonders, grimacing in frustration.
Silas takes a breath. "If you've got the time, I'll tell it while I finish this up, send you off with some barbecue for your trouble. If you don't… I get it. Just know that I think it's important enough to ask, even knowin' what you just told me about the time we've got left," he says.
“One, if you think that I’m giving up barbeque for anything you’ve got another thing coming,” is Richard’s reply with a shake of his head and a slight smile, “Two, until this storm eases a bit we’re probably not going fucking anywhere so I’ve got nothing but time…”
A push off the exterior wall of the cabin, and he stepped over towards the smoker, turning his head to look across the water, “…and three? I learned a long time ago that nothing in this business is a coincidence, and if you think something’s significant, it probably is.”
"Smart," Silas nods. "It's pretty uncommon out here, you know. Barbecue, I mean. That's one reason it's been a decent sideline for me, now and again." Plus, a free meal's a free meal.
He heads over to the smoker, opening it up to reveal several pieces of meat within — mostly fowl, it looks like, along with what might be squirrels or some other sort of more terrestrial critter — and starts applying sauce, brushing it on lightly.
"So. This story goes back to before the Travelers — Lis's batch, I mean — ever set foot in this world. Maybe even before they left yours. Quite awhile back, we had a few boats come limping in from the north, through the edge of the Stormfront. Travelers — lowercase 't', mind you, though they'd made a helluva journey all the same — who'd come sailin' from the other side of the world, via the Northwest passage."
"One of 'em in particular would wind up saving my ass many times, and would eventually become my best friend… though we didn't exactly start that way," he grins. "She fought like the devil though, so I invited her to the Forthright. Mad Eve took her on whenever she came around…"
Silas falls silent for a moment as an unexpected stab of grief hits him. Luckily he doesn't need to see to take care of his cooking; methodically, he applies the sauce, brushing it onto the smoking meat.
"Mad Eve's one of the big reasons I joined Lis's merry band, you know. Even when the Sentinel's flagship was comin' for the Pelago, she thought it was important that the Travelers get where they were going. And… well, you know that part, I'm sure. But here's something you probably don't."
"Not long after I arrived in the Safe Zone, I bumped into another familiar face; someone from Japan, brought over Stateside by Kimiko Nakamura. It was her last day in the Safe Zone, and she'd dropped by Red Hook to pick up a souvenir."
"We struck up a chat; later, on a… call it a nagging intuition… I asked her to look into the other me." Silas grimaces. "Into Redd. That was, uh. Quite a conversation, but I knew enough to calm her down and keep her from deciding to digitally gut me."
"Then, on Halloween night… I had two surprise visitors. One of them was Redd. The other was her — back from Japan to check out my Halloween exhibit, can you believe it? She and Kain saved my ass." He pauses, chuckling… though his good humor fades quickly, leaving him looking troubled. "You know… I wonder about Kain. Last few times we talked, he seemed to be getting… distant, you know? Made me think he might be getting back into shit," Silas says, with more than a little regret.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” admits Richard, his expression darkening at the mention of Kain; glancing away, a sigh whispering past his lips, “He and I have… a complicated history. Here, and— apparently there, too. Anyway.”
Silas raises an eyebrow at that, but it's a tangent that doesn't seem terribly relevant, here and now; after a moment he sighs and moves on. "So, anyway. Then comes Eve's little fishing trip. I'll spare you the details there — you already heard 'em anyway, sounds like. I'm hoping everyone else made it back safe, but the Dragon punched my ticket; like you guys, I got dropped from the sky into the middle of the ocean. Else Kjelstrom was waiting for me, though… otherwise I'd have drowned, a thousand miles from anywhere…"
"It took me months, but I made it back — with a shiny new boat, to boot. But I had questions. Why was I back here again? I only had one lead — before she'd killed him, the Dragon had called Adam Kensei. I've only heard that title once before, in an old story. Adam Monroe being Kensei seemed crazy… but not impossible. Or at least, no more impossible than anything else," Silas shrugs, glancing to Richard.
“Yeah, he was Kensei,” Richard admits.
That sees Silas pause and raise an eyebrow at that, surprised that Richard was able to confirm that. "Huh. Good to hear confirmation on that, at least," Silas muses, then shrugs. "I went to ask Monroe about it when I got back into town… but that turned out to be a dead end. Literally — as in, Monroe was dead. I asked Ryans, but he wouldn't tell me much one way or the other… so that left me with Plan B — investigating at the source."
"I knew it was possible to journey from Japan to here… which meant, in theory, it was possible to make it back. Figured if I was going to try something that crazy, might as well make it official. The Council bought in, and we set sail, on the Archipelago of Manhattan's first ever trans-Pacific voyage."
Silas grins broadly, closing the smoker back up as he turns to face Richard. "We made it," he says, with no small pride. "To the Isles of Japan. But when we headed towards the docks…"
"There was someone waiting for us."
Richard whistles, low and easy under his breath at the news. “That’s a damn impressive feat, given the distance and the level of technology that you’re dealing with here…”
Then his eyebrows go up at the ‘cliffhanger’, “Who was it?”
"Had nothing to do with technology," Silas says, shaking his head. "It was a fisherman by the name of Keiichi. But get this — he said that long ago, before the Flood, someone had come through and warned him and his dad that it was coming. They'd ignored that one, but managed to survive anyway. But here's the thing — he said they'd also told him that someone would be coming from across the sea. On the very day we arrived," Silas says, staring at Richard intently; reaching under his shirt, he draws out a pendant and holds it up — a stylized bone hook. "He gave me this."
It’s a symbol that Richard’s seen before, but more jarringly it reminds him of a pendant that he’s seen before. His eyes widen as he steps forward, half-raising a hand but not quite taking it.
“Walter…?” His brow knits a bit, gaze flickering to Silas, “Did they have a name for him?”
"No, they didn't. Pretty sure it wasn't Walter; he still had his, last I saw — before Sunspot. But the similarities are enough to make you think, huh?" he asks. "Walter served aboard the Forthright too, you know. Fished out of the sea by Mad Eve… kinda like how I got fished out of the sea by Else," he says, tucking the pendant back into his shirt.
"Keiichi waited for us, even though he hadn't thought we'd come. He gave me the pendant, and he gave us a message that he'd been told to pass on, pointing us to the base of Mt. Fuji. And he gave me one more thing…" Silas muses… but he doesn't say what that is just yet.
"So… we made our way to Fuji-san. Found an estate there, just like we'd been told we would. It was the Nakamura estate. Kaito Nakamura — the man who'd advised a load of travelers to come across the sea, including my best friend. The man whose daughter brought Asi to America in your world, just in time for me to bump into her out shopping and strike up a friendship with a familiar face, which would again save my life," Silas says, regarding Richard with a piercing gaze.
"I had been hoping to meet the man while I was here — to thank him for sending me a friend. But it turns out I was too late; Nakamur-san had passed. An old neighbor of his had taken the place over, though he showed us to where Nakamura-san had been buried…"
And now Silas smiles an eerie half smile as he looks over; there, secured firmly to the side of the wheelhouse is a humble shovel. "But I still had the final gift we'd been given on arriving to Japan."
Now he looks back to Richard, his expression serious. "Turns out, Nakamura had taken a secret to his grave, inside a locked box. I'd never had any doubts about digging it up, but if I had… those were dispelled in short order. Because Aces had the key with her."
"And I'll tell you one more thing, Richard. Even if you can leave aside a chain of coincidences stacked end-for-end like that…" he says, raising a finger. "I'll tell you this. I sailed with Else Kjelstrom for awhile, finding my way back to this place; I've seen a lot of expressions on her face. But only once have I seen her look well and truly surprised, and it was when we brought back that box." Silas waits a second or two, letting that settle in. "So I think it's worth digging into. Especially since, as you say — we've got a little time."
“The Nakamuras… it must have been Hiro, then,” Richard theorizes, his brow furrowed, “It doesn’t matter that Walter still had it last you knew, though— time isn’t a line. But if it led you to Nakamura’s grave, then it must have been Hiro. Some version of him, anyway.”
Time travellers are complicated people.
“Silas…” He chuckles a little, “…I spent years taking actions based on letters I continually received from a dead man who’d planned the entire civil war out in advance without even time travelling. You won’t ever find me saying it’s probably a coincidence.”
He motions a bit, “It’s always someone’s plan. And Nakamura— well. He was a planner. What was in the box?”
Silas nods at Richard's assessment of the Nakamuras; it's good to hear that someone else thinks the same way. He hesitates for a moment when Richard asks what was in the box, but there's no point keeping it back. "A mirror and another fish hook," Silas says flatly, looking a little sour. "And the coded message, of course, which I hope to God is some kind of instruction manual. And, so you know… you and me and Aces makes three people on this whole damn world who know what was in that box, aside from your codebreaker," he says, nodding.
"Speaking of which…" he begins regarding Richard intently. "What've you got? Who do we need to talk to about maybe gettin' this thing cracked?"
“A mirror…?” Richard’s brow knits a bit, “What did it look like? And what sort of code are we talking about here— computer code, encrypted code..?” He brings a hand up, scratching under his chin, “We have a few— methods of reaching back to the other timelines. One goes through Bright, and I don’t trust that one much, despite its resources. The other one’s more…” A pause, “Quiet. You know, never let one person control your flow of information.”
"Old, shiny. A little fancy — had some silver lines around the edges — but… just a mirror," Silas says, raising an eyebrow. "The code… I'm assumin' was computer generated. Also in Japanese. I couldn't read it, but neither could a native speaker, so it's not just me suckin' at kanji," Silas grumbles. "So. You line me up a meeting with your codebreaker, and I'll be there," he says, nodding.
Then he glances back to the smoker. "And… I think our barbecue's probably cooked enough to eat," Silas says with a grin. "Gimme just a second…"
He turns and ducks back into the boat; it doesn't take him long to come back with a pair of plates and some chipped silverware. "… and we can have that dinner I talked about," Silas says, grinning toothily. "So. Bird or critter?"