Participants:
| Scene Title | No Such Thing As |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | …coincidence, Silas learns when he has a chat with the Yeah Buoy's captain. |
| Date | June 19, 2021 |
Aboard the Yeah Buoy in the Pelago.
It's a dark and stormy day as Silas Mackenzie strides along the docks; clouds hang heavy in the sky, the air is thick with salt and humidity and the promise of rain, and thunder rumbles threateningly in the distance… which, by the standards of the Pelago these days, is positively hospitable weather. It's not raining yet, after all… which is why Silas picked this morning to try and track down the captain who brought the Travelers to the Pelago. The name of the ship had certainly been… memorable… so it's not hard for Silas to track down where the Yeah, Buoy! is docked.
"Ahoy the ship!" he calls.
The captain is sitting in the wheelhouse, so she easily hears Silas’ call. She steps out, easy to spot in her yellow fisherman’s coat at least a few sizes too big for her.
“Ahoy the dock!” Nova calls back, with a wave of her hand. The other hand holds a mug of something hot and steamy, its silvery vapor rising from its brim. “I’m all alone at the moment, so if you were looking for one of the others, I’m afraid I’m not sure how long of a wait that will be. It was Jonathan’s turn to watch them.”
The joke is delivered deadpan, if it’s a joke.
"Fine by me; as it happens, I was lookin' for you," Silas calls back, grinning mildly. "Mind if I come aboard? I was hopin' to ask you some questions."
That he’s looking for her earns him a surprised look, but Nova doesn’t seem too worried. “If you like,” she says amiably enough with a shrug.
She makes her way carefully on the slippery deck to the back deck, where it’s easiest to board the boat, with the help of a thin plywood ramp that’s already been set there for just that purpose. She stretches out a hand to help him should he want it, given the dampness that makes everything slippery and wet, even for practiced captains.
“Come on in out of the rain,” she suggests, gesturing to the door that will lead him down into the cabin. “I have no real coffee on board, but I do have some tea, if you want something warm,” she says, the faint Dutch accent sharpening her w’s into soft v’s.
"I'd certainly not say no to some tea," Silas smiles as he approaches. He treads carefully up the ramp; he keeps his eye on the offered hand in case it's needed, but happily it's not.
Once aboard, he nods to Nova; getting under cover before the rain starts coming down in earnest — again — sounds appealing. "I'm Captain Silas Mackenzie, of the Second Star," he introduces himself again — she knows his name, but there's no harm in courtesy. "You're Captain Van Dalen, as I recall? I was hoping to ask you some questions, if you have the time."
She leads him into the small common area of the below decks and gestures for him to take a seat on the aging sofas. The little yacht has seen better days and there’s a certain smell that comes with boats like this, meant more for work than leisure even before leisure was a thing of the past — sea water, diesel, and dampness combine into a smell that isn’t unpleasant, really, though some might wrinkle their nose at it.
Nova isn’t one of those, clearly. She kicks off her shoes and pads on mismatched socks into the kitchen, where a kettle sits on the stove. She turns on the burner to reheat the water, then moves efficiently around the small space to gather the mug and the tea canister.
“Ja, but Nova will do. I like the name of that boat. Do you fancy yourself a Peter Pan, then?” she says with a bright smile over her shoulder as she spoons some tea into what looks like a handmade diffuser made of welded-together bits of metal. “It’s just chamomile, I’m afraid. I do have some honey I got in trade, though.”
Silas smiles at the introduction… but when she asks if he fancies himself a Peter Pan, his polite smile becomes something more sincere, though there's an edge of wry amusement to his humor. "A poor Peter Pan I'd be, I'm afraid. But the name struck my fancy."
"In any case, I'm none too picky. I'll take chamomile over instant tea, but you'd not have found me complaining even if you'd only had instant. I will say that I'd definitely be grateful for some of that honey, though," he admits, settling himself down on one of the sofas.
He watches as Nova spoons the tea into her teapot; it definitely looks like a custom piece of work. Maybe even like something he'd slap together, if he was short on parts but had a job needing to be done. "I was hoping to ask you about the Anchor," he says after a moment.
As the tea begins to steep, Nova turns, hopping up on the little counter and crossing her ankles so she Silas while she waits in the tiny galley.
At the mention of Anchor, she smiles a little wider — perhaps she’d been worried he was going to ask her more about the details of the trip or the travelers she’s taking with her, and not all of those are her stories to tell.
“That, I can happily tell you about, Captain Mackenzie,” she says, crossing her ankles as they dangle from the counter. “It’s what was once called Anchorage and the surrounding areas, if you knew where that was.” There’s an innocence to that remark that suggests Nova assumes no one knows anything about a land so far away, rather than an implication he’s terrible at geography.
“What would you like to know? I do not want to sound like a… what do you call it, a person who sells houses?” she asks, grinning at the comparison.
"Oh, I can think of lots of things to call them," Silas observes mildly, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. Especially these days, with the housing market so far… underwater, he thinks, but — mercifully — does not say. "You're probably thinking of a real estate agent, though. And call me Silas," he adds off-handedly.
"Mostly, I'm wanting to know about the overall state of things up there. How's the food? What kinds of things do you have that you would trade? What kinds of things do you need? That sort of thing," Silas explains. Then he pauses for a moment. "Which, I realize, is maybe an unfairly broad question, so let me put it this way. What about the Pelago strikes you as different from life in the Anchor?"
“Ah, yes, that is it. Real estate agent,” she says, nodding. “I can speak better English if I link up with the more fluent mes, but I’m only me at the moment. I don’t know all the words for things we don’t have anymore.”
Whether that makes any sense to him or not, she doesn’t explain.
“The biggest difference is there is more land,” Nova answers. “Enough to spread out a little. Enough to hunt on. And we still have some oil fields that work, so we are not so limited in how far we can go, or have to argue whether or not someone’s trip is worth the fuel. That’s not to say we waste it frivolously, but we are not so bad off as you are here in the Pelago.”
The kettle begins to keen, so she hops down to pour the water in the mug over the handmade infuser so that it can steep, then opens a cabinet to get a mason jar of honey.
“Honey bees are not indigenous to Alaska, but there are some apiaries in Anchor,” she says, finding a spoon next and carrying tea, mug, spoon all to sit in front of Silas on the coffee table.
“As for food, there is venison and grouse and fish. Moose, chickens… some of the farms survived, and you can get things like dairy, though it isn’t as easy to come by. Oh, goats, there is a lovely goat farm I know of. The cheese is divine.” She grins, and looks out at the water, eyes narrowing for a moment. “I do get tired of fish. That seems sacrilegious for a Dutchwoman to say, ja?”
More fluent mes is a turn of phrase that definitely catches Silas's attention, but he only nods politely for the moment, even as he makes a note to revisit it later.
He doesn't move for the tea immediately — better to let it steep for a bit — but he grins when Nova professes to be tired of fish. "I won't tell if you don't," Silas remarks with a grin.
His expression grows more thoughtful as he gives Nova's assessment of the Anchor. "It sounds like a good place for barbecue," he observes. "I do well here, mind, because people here also get tired of fish now and again, but… it's a lot of work to source the supplies," he says, shaking his head.
"And speaking of which… I have one more question about the Anchor, before I move on," he says, sobering. "What do you think people there would be willing to trade for? Not necessarily limited to what's on hand here; just in general." Now he reaches for the tea.
She tips her head thoughtfully, blue eyes lifting up and over as she thinks over the question. After a long moment, her gaze returns to rest on Silas’ face.
“Honestly, there isn’t much here that they can’t get there and more easily,” she says in agreement. “There might be a limited amount of interest in material things from this area that they don’t have there, just for the novelty of it — snuisterijen. Um, trinkets, souvenirs. Like tiny statues of liberty for a mantel, ja? But minimal — most people these days are not so sentimental.”
She lifts her own mug to her lips for a slow sip. “Mostly they may want to barter for your labor, I think, Security, maybe — there is a military group not so far away that we stay clear of. So far they stay clear of us, too, luckily.”
Silas nods slowly as he fixes his cup of tea, adding a generous dollop of honey and stirring. "Salvage and skilled labor are probably our greatest strengths, yeah," Silas muses. But salvage is a niche market, and skilled labor is hard to export without exporting the laborers, too. A viable overland route might change that, though.
He muses for a moment, considering. "What can you tell me about this military group, though? How close are they, which direction, what kind of stuff do they have?" Military may not always mean Sentinel but Nova's concern doesn't suggest good things about them. Better to know the bear before I start looking too hard around it's back yard.
“They’re not too close,” Nova reassures him. “Three hundred, almost four hundred miles away at Fort Wainwright. American military. They have the oil fields up to the north. So far it is live and let live, no problems. But there is always power in numbers, so having more numbers is good for the Anchor, and you would be welcome for that, I think, so long as you don’t take more than you give.”
She lifts her mug to her own lips and studies him for a moment. “Do you make things — electronics?” she asks curiously.
Silas nods, his raised mug masking his grimace as possible Sentinel ticks up to probably Sentinel in his mind. Well, no helping it. He'll have to try to check his maps, see if they've got a Fort Wainwright on them.
Her assessment of strength in numbers draws another nod, though, this one without an accompanying grimace. "That's true. For what that's worth, anyone who's made it this long out here's bound to have some individual skills… and if those skills don't necessarily translate well to life in the Anchor, well — never too old to learn. We're pretty good at that, I'd say," he says with a grin.
Nova's question about electronics, though, sees him blink. "Electronics? Wouldn't say I really make them too much. I'm halfway decent at fixin' 'em, though, provided they aren't the really fiddly stuff. Toasters, cable boxes, that sort of thing. And boat stuff. I was Chief Engineer and/or Cook aboard the Forthright for quite awhile before I got the Second Star." Silas frowns slightly, studying Nova. "Why? You needin' something fixed?" he asks curiously. "I don't have my tools with me, but I can take a look at it if your boat's got a gremlin or something." He grimaces. "Lots of gremlins on the Forthright," he mutters, the words bilge hot tub floating through the back of his mind like a baleful ghost. Bah! Begone, foul spirit! Away!
She laughs at the word gremlin, one of those that don’t need translating across the languages. “Oh, no, no gremlins here. I’m pretty handy with electronics and mechanics, even the fiddly stuff, if I know what it’s supposed to look like when it’s not broken. My… you might call him my peetoom,” she thinks for a moment, looking up and away, before continuing, “godfather! Sort of. Unofficially. Richard Drucker. He has taught me much. He is a heliophysicist. The one the group has come to see.”
Nova’s smirk turns up again. “I am not that good, but I can fix radios and an engine when the gremlins get in it, most of the time. No, I just asked out of curiosity. But your other skills will be good in Anchor. It isn’t so much that we are in need of specialized skills there, but of course people with those are welcome. Doctors, scientists, food growers. A community is more than the skills the people bring to it, ja?”
Silas gives an odd smile at that; it's genuine, but not with a bit of sorrow. "Sometimes just being there to help — just showing up — can be enough. Heavy work's made lighter when we all lift together."
He lets that sit for a moment before taking advantage of the excellent segue opportunity she's given him. "Which brings me to you," he says, grinning with rueful amusement. "Falling out of the sky into the ocean is nobody's idea of a good time; if you hadn't been there, it sounds like they'd have had a very good chance of drowning. Was it just luck that you were passing through?"
That question draws a smile from her that then disappears behind the rim of her mug as she takes another sip of tea. “Four hundred miles south of the Pelago — that would be quite a lucky coincidence,” Nova says, and she shakes her head.
“No. My ability allows me to communicate with my other selves in other worlds, like theirs. Dimensions, some might call them. Timelines, is what the official people call them. This is what they call the root timeline, because the others branched from this one, from my understanding,” she explains. “So one of my other selves is involved with trying to help them on their mission, and has communicated with me so I could help them here. She hasn’t told me everything, though. I only know some bits and bobs, though I could go listen in on her meetings more if I want to.”
Nova’s smile returns and she shakes her head. “The meetings can be very boring. She is much better than I am at sitting still in one place for a long time.”
Out of all the things she's dropped on the table in the last thirty seconds, it's the location that Silas reacts most visibly to, lips creasing down to a sharp-pointed frown as he works that out. "Off Virginia? Christ," he mutters, shaking his head. Antonia went there, too. What the fuck is going on with Virginia? Silas wonders uneasily.
But there's a lot more to think about. "But… you said the others branched from this one…?" he echoes, frowning. Somehow, he'd been under the impression that Lis's home had been the root. Then again, Lis and hers were the ones you talked to most about all of this. Not that surprising. "Interesting. And your ability…"
Silas trails off as he considers that, a smile slowly spreading back over his face. "So no matter what… you never have to be alone," he muses. "You've always got someone who understands. That's… pretty incredible."
He takes a drink of his tea, eyes slipping off into the middle distance as he gathers his thoughts. "I was wondering how you'd managed to catch 'em, since, as you say — pretty big coincidence to be in the right place at the right time. Especially if you're comin' from Alaska. There's two ways to get here from there with a boat that I know of — the Northwest Passage through Canada and the Panama route — and I've sailed 'em both. Virginia'd be a long bit out of the way from the Northwest; less so from Panama, admittedly, but Panama's a long trip to start with. But if you knew they were coming, and where… that's a different matter," he grins.
Silas's gaze goes distant again as he takes another drink of his tea. "I've seen one of those other timelines — the one Richard is from. Went there the first time the Travelers came through. Weird place, but… wasn't all bad. But… I got thrown back. Landed in the same ballpark as where you caught this merry band — and good work on that, Captain," he says, flashing Nova a brief grin.
His gaze drifts off again quickly enough. "Else was the one who caught me when I got kicked back here. Said she'd been inspired with a song about a man falling from the sky. Good thing for me, too. Otherwise…"
Silas is silent for a moment after that otherwise… but then he looks back to Nova. "Do you know why they've come here? The Travelers, I mean," he asks abruptly.
Silent as Silas muses over her route, Nova draws in the air with her finger first a little to the left, then up and down on the right in a half circle to let him know which path she took to get from Alaska to the Atlantic.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they started where you exited,” she says, though she doesn’t elaborate. His abrupt question draws her brows up, and she glances out the window toward the dock, like one of the travelers might walk up and help her out in answering.
When Nova looks back at him, she lifts her shoulders. “I know what they told you is true. There is a threat and they seek the help of my petoom. He is no longer alive in their world, and he is maybe the only person who can help.” She tips her head, studying him, her blue eyes no longer merry but solemn. “I don’t know if I can tell you more, but I know they are in earnest, if you have worries on that front. They’ve made great sacrifices to come here.”
I don't know if I can tell you more. There it is, the answer to the question Silas had asked; he nods. "I know they are. And I know they have," he says, matching her solemnity with a quiet gravity of his own. Even his smile, when it returns a moment later, has a sadness to it. "I thought you most likely did know. Especially given what your… petoom, was it?" he asks, enunciating the new word carefully. "Especially given what he does for a living. Still, I'm glad of it."
The solemn moment passes quickly enough, though, and his grin takes on a more affable character. "Doesn't surprise me to hear there's some significance there, either; truth be told, I don't put a lot of stock in coincidence, these days."
He finishes his tea, setting the mug down before he looks back to Nova. "You said you could… communicate with your other selves. How many timelines are there, anyway? Lis mentioned a few, but…"
Silas trails off, shaking his head; that isn't what he wanted to ask. Not really. He takes a breath. "Could… would it be possible for you to pass on a message for me?" he asks tentatively.
“Probably infinite,” Nova says with a grin, “but I think that there are reasons we can only travel through some of them, and that I can only interact with some of them. Someone with much more quantum physics knowledge than me can probably tell you why, but I am only aware of four others, so five including ours here.”
Her grin slips a little, her lips quirking over to one side, as she considers his next question. “Maybe,” she answers hesitantly. “The timeline you visited — my other me is not… how to say it. She’s not online, if that makes sense. But I can maybe go in a,” she draws a circle in the air, “rotunde way, maybe? Through another me, who is in contact with others from there… and then they can pass it on, maybe.”
Or she could use Elliot, but she doesn’t offer up his power, since it’s his secret to tell.
“We can try, ja?” Nova says instead. “What is the message?”
Silas raises an eyebrow. Interesting, that, he thinks to himself… but it seems to him that digging into that is a good way to go off into the weeds, and he's already been to reality's backstage in person.
"To Elisabeth Harrison," Silas says slowly, considering his words. "Rumors of my death have been exaggerated; I'm not dead, but I am stuck at home. Let anyone who might care — especially the survivors of our little field trips — know that I'm alive and I wish them the best. Tell Lis to remember what I told her under the cherry tree." Your wish came true, so now you've gotta own it. Live the life you fought so hard for. He smiles faintly. "And tell her I'll do what I can to help Richard along the way, just as I did her."
"And… to Asi Tetsuyama…" he says… then pauses. "Tell her that her friend from the other side of the Looking Glass dodged another bullet and is still kicking… and that though I'm back on this side of the Glass, I'm still rooting for her. And tell her I said thanks."
Nova listens, her blue eyes intent on his face as she chronicles the moment – there’s no need to write it down, not when she can slip into her own past to review it whenever she wants to.
When he finishes speaking, she smiles, nodding once to indicate she’s got it all down. “I am sure we can get the message to those two, at the least,” she says softly. “How lucky to know Asi on both sides of the glass, ja?”
She doesn’t tell him at least one more of him knows at least one more of Asi, but that secret knowledge makes her smile to herself.
Silas smiles. "Yeah. Saved my life. On both sides," he says; he isn't sure it's a coincidence, either, but there's no reason to bring that up here. "Leaving like I did… it's not that different from dyin' as far as the ones left behind are concerned. Unfinished business and all that. Thanks for helping me lay some of it to rest," he says, nodding.
Then he levers himself to his feet. "Well. I won't take up any more of your time," he says. "Thank you for your hospitality, and your candor. If you find yourself getting tired of fish while you're here, feel free to drop by the Second Star sometime and I'll see about getting you some barbecue; least I can do," Silas says, smiling.
Nova rises to her feet when he does.
“That is very kind of you. You don’t need to repay me for a little bit of information or sending messages to those who miss you, but good company and good food are always welcome. The former is more rare than barbecue, I think,” she say, then adds, “at least for some people. As you say, I have always someone to talk to.”
She holds up a finger to tell him to wait for a moment, and then takes a few quick steps back into the little galley, picking up the honey jar from where she’s left it. In a couple strides back, she presses the jar into his hands. “I have more, and there is more where I will return to. Perhaps you’ll see it one day.”