Participants:
| Scene Title | Scientific Method (To My Madness) |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Gatter passes on some information that may or may not mean something important. |
| Date | July 12, 2021 |
No matter how much lab space Gatter gets, it will invariably become cluttered within a matter of weeks; he always has new ideas, and it seems such a waste to let perfectly good lab space go fallow, and the result is a space that is positively infested with science, in much the same way that a forest glen might become infested with kudzu. Three whiteboards on wheels occupy one wall, each covered in frenzied scrawls. Three clocks of varying makes and models tick merrily away on the walls, all out of sync; one of them is a digital model, and it ticks too thanks to some modifications. It also appears to be counting backwards.
Various apparatuses sit on tables around the room, in varying states of disassembly and incompletion; the doctor himself is currently at the sink, trying to hurriedly wash a small pile of glassware. He has a guest arriving soon, after all… though guest might not be precisely the right term.
The chaos of SCIENCE is not unfamiliar to Elisabeth. The funniest part of her life is that walking into Michelle Cardinal's science lab, Devi's mechanical lab, Gatter's bio lab, and Richard's goddamn string map room is not so different an experience, regardless of whose space it is. She pauses at the doorway to take in the 'organized' insanity of the room, weary blue eyes seeking out the man amid the equipment.
"Dr. Gatter," the blonde calls warily from the doorway. "Is it safe to enter?" There was this one time she walked into Devi's lab without warning and almost got her head taken off. She announces her arrival nowadays. Just in case.
"Ah! You're right on time," Gatter calls, turning around to greet Elisabeth with a weary grin —
— just as one of the clocks begins to sound an alarm. "Come in, come in!" he calls, turning off the water and hurriedly drying his hands before rushing over to silence an alarm. Another one goes off immediately thereafter, then a third, before Gatter manages to get the clocks silenced. "Sorry about that. Come in, come in!"
She watches the flurry of activity, a bemused expression on her face, and when he's finally silenced the cacophony Elisabeth comes the rest of the way in. "Were you that afraid you'd somehow miss me?" she asks, a single brow quirking upward. Her smile is faint but it's there. She leans a hip on one of the counters and asks, "What can I do for you, Dr. Gatter?" She's very curious, that much shows in her face. They've only met a couple of times, so his call was a bit of a surprise.
"Yes," is Gatter's blunt reply, and as he finally slows down from a frenzy to a more subdued pace, he looks… tired. "I've been trying to get in touch with Dr. Cranston for the last few days, but with little luck. And…" he chuckles mirthlessly, "I'm not really sure who to get in touch with on this, but I felt I had best get in touch with someone. I was hoping that you might be able to forward the information to Dr. Cranston… or perhaps that you'd have an idea of what to do with it yourself. It's also relevant to your interests, I believe."
Oh! Well…. Okay then. It must be important indeed. Elisabeth tips her head and studies him with a thoughtful air. "Dr. Cranston is probably going to be out-of-pocket for some time," she offers quietly. "I don't know how long – Michelle is not the best at picking up the phone to start with. But the project she's on right now is one that is likely to keep her hyperfocused for a while. What is it that you've found?"
"Yes, the impending sunshowers," Gatter says, nodding wearily. "Dr. Cranston was supposed to be first contact on it, with Agent Carrington taking it in her absence… except, as you know, Agent Carrington was recently incapacitated, and apparently forwarded it to me." He takes a breath. "Are you familiar with WRAY, in Manhattan, Kansas?"
Now Elisabeth's expression has a faint frown and she nods immediately. "I am. Why?" Her shoulders are set tight, and she's clearly expecting bad news.
"Good," Gatter says, exhaling a shaky breath. That saves time. "On July 7th, our operator there received a transmission, which we learned about halfway through was coming from the year 1997."
"What the f—?" Elisabeth blows out a breath and drags a hand through her hair. "Okay. Give me what details you have. What was the message and who was it from?" This shit *again*? Goddamn it!
"Kansas. Dust in the Wind. Followed by a lovely lady doing a spoken segment about the physics of love." Gatter sighs wistfully at the memory, shaking his head. "Beautiful."
After a moment, he returns to the here and now. "Our operator reported the signal had been coming through for several days, a pre-recorded loop. Upon hearing this, I instructed him to attempt to respond, as per extant communications protocols. When he did, we very quickly got a response."
"They wanted to know," Gatter says, then pauses to wheeze a chuckle. "They wanted to know how we stopped the asteroid."
Elisabeth stares at him wordlessly. It's as if for a moment she's frozen where she stands. And then she moves slowly toward a stool that's pushed under one of his lab tables and carefully lowers herself onto it, looking stunned. "You… you said this was from 1997." The past. "I'm… Dr. Gatter, I'm not sure if it's relevant, but can you get a transcript of the entire thing?" She wants to read it. "I know the song, you don't need to have that written – just… the rest."
She looks like she might be feeling ill. The possibilities are so momentous that she's struggling to wrap her mind around it. "That's all they asked? How we stopped … an asteroid?" Wait. Wait. Her brows pull together. "Was… was there a near-miss asteroid pass in '97?" She's not up on astronomy – not one of her interests in the first place, but that's also in the ten or so years of memories that are missing in her mind thanks to a terrorist's bullet.
Gatter nods at the request for a transcript; the question about near misses sees him frown. "Several, most likely. Defining 'near miss' as 'within one lunar distance', astrogation data is good enough that we were detecting several near-miss events a year. Predicting them in advance, usually."
"Which was the case here, as well. The particular asteroid they were worried about was one called 4581-Asclepius, which their data predicted to have a near 100 percent chance of impacting the earth on January 12th of 2019."
He pauses, glancing to Elisabeth. "A date I believe may be relevant to your interests."
Elisabeth goes ghost white, staring at him wordlessly. January 12, 2019.
«WARNING: REACTOR AT CRITICAL. EVACUATE ALL PERSONNEL.»_ Her heart kicks into high gear. The resonating hum builds and the audiokinetic catches her breath on a gasp. She knows he hit the right one before he even speaks — it resonates deep inside her. Home.
His voice echoes in her mind like a hi-bounce rubber ball, slingshotting around her head apt to break something in its out-of-control trajectory. January 12, 2019.
She takes the vibration and starts magnifying it, tighter, bigger, forming it first into the metaphorical equivalent of fishing line then adding to it to make it 'thicker'. Not a filament but a steel cable. … The room starts shaking. It builds and builds, a low roar rattling the entire place, and Elisabeth shapes it into the narrowest beam possible as it builds.
Why does she feel like she's underwater? There is almost no sound here. What little there is, is distorted and Gatter's facial expression seems elongated for a moment.
Rianna Cardinal explodes into a being of pure light, swirling and radiant threads of energy. She turns, her burning silhouette too bright to look directly at. She is disassembled by El Umbral, torn apart and refined into a swirling ring of light that resembles a perfect white halo around the edge of the portal’s red and seething interior. It is joined by the roaring flames cast by Isabelle, by the electricity surging from Mateo. This trinity of power sources is enough, perhaps just enough and the wildly thrashing tail of the portal steadies at Lynette’s command and straightens into a tunnel.
It's mere seconds, not more than a few of them. And then it's like she remembers how to breathe, pulling in a long breath as if she's surfacing from a swimming pool. She still looks quite pale, but at least she doesn't look like she's going to pass out.
Maybe.
"Relevant…" The word is a whisper forced through a dry throat. "That's… probably a good word." Elisabeth swallows hard. The repercussions of that day continue to reverberate through time, don't they? Oh god… what did we do?
Gatter frowns, looking concerned. "Do you, uh. Need a chair? An actual chair? I have chairs…" he says, looking around. "… somewhere…" he finishes distractedly.
She shakes her head. The stool is just fine for now. She's not going to even attempt to stand up. "Did you… did you learn anything else?" Elisabeth swallows again. "Was there anything else helpful in the message?"
Gatter nods. "The conversation didn't go on much longer after that; the connection lost stability shortly afterwards. The interesting thing is that we have data on 4581-Asclepius, as well… and it doesn't match."
"There was a near miss with that asteroid on March 23 of 1989, with the next predicted in 2051. It shouldn't have been anywhere near the Earth in 2019, and yet in that timeline it was! Do you understand what that means? The sky there is different!"
She's struggling to parse what he's telling her. Because initially, she was sitting here wondering if the transit from Flood to here had somehow pushed off enough energy to divert a strike. But … no. What he's saying is the opposite…. So Elisabeth has to wonder, did their arrival cause the other timeline's demise? The sky shouldn't be different like that…. Right?
Looking confused, Liz seems to be fighting to find the right words to say or maybe questions to ask. "That doesn't make any sense to me," she admits. "That – okay, so the only timelines I've personally experienced are like a single star in the whole universe of them, I get that. But… why would that asteroid have been in a different place….?" She's trying desperately to figure out anything that might make some kind of sense. "Uhm… theoretically, could the layout of the galaxy or even just the local solar system really be that different?"
Gatter seems to deflate, his supposition and hypothesizing hitting a brick wall. "I don't know. Is it just an outlier? Or is it a larger-scale difference? There isn't enough information from this single transmission; I've been trying to calculate delta-vs… well, nevermind that. But…"
"We have corroborating solar data from our timeline and one other, and based on that, we've hypothesized that solar activity seems to be a fixed phenomenon — that the cosmos beyond the reach of human hands is operating in lockstep. But now…" he sighs. "Well. Maybe it doesn't mean anything immediately relevant. Maybe our theory of Many Worlds, One Sky is still correct, and maybe there's an explanation for the discrepancy; certainly, I'm still going to keep operating under the assumption that that's the case. But…"
He straightens, his mouth narrowing into a grim line. "But I wanted to pass this on to someone."
There's a long moment where the blonde is quiet, and then finally Elisabeth tells him in a soft voice, "Dr. Gatter… Considering the literally inconceivable circumstances of my past decade or so and the improbable things that you have learned and been doing as we move toward what's coming… the very fact that a transmission was received pretty much tells me that it's relevant. We may not have a clue why or how. But it's relevant." Her blue eyes have a somewhat jaded expression. "There is no such thing as coincidence when you are us. Or paranoia. Those concepts are just ways of life around here."
She sighs heavily. "I don't have a fucking clue what to do with the information. Nor who to trust, if anyone, with it. So keep it under your hat until I can sort out what to do with it, please?" Dragging a hand through her hair, she murmurs, "Looks like I'm taking a trip to Kansas City." Because this fucking mess makes no sense without either Michelle's input or Richard's, as far as Liz is concerned. They're the bloody alternate reality and physics geniuses.
Gatter lets out a slow breath, scrubbing a hand down his face. "I'll… do my best to keep it under my hat, then, as you say," he says heavily. He straightens, looking back to Lis, and nods. "That's… all I have, I suppose. I'll continue working with the Kansas office on any further transmissions until informed otherwise."
He pauses. "I don't suppose you'd know of any experiments we're running on cobalt, would you?" Admittedly a long shot, but no harm in venturing the question.
"I kind of figure we can't do much to follow up on this unless or until it happens again anyway, right?" Elisabeth shrugs just a little. "I think the current project has a little more urgency to it. But anything else out of the ordinary, absolutely get that to me immediately." She nibbles her lip looking pensive. "I don't like things that don't fit." And that doesn't seem to fit what they know right now.
When he asks about cobalt, though, she looks confused. "Uhm…. no?" It's more a question than it is a reply, honestly. "I don't even know much about it except that it's a metal that makes a lovely blue color when it's turned into glass… Sometimes found in meteors? Are we running experiments with it?" Elisabeth pauses and points out, "I might be the boss's wife, but I'm not exactly in RayTech's loop when it comes to projects, financials, or anything else. I'm just… kinda the boss's wife and that's it." She sounds kind of amused about that, as if it's a joke to her that her husband is the CEO of this place and even now she still can't quite believe someone's not going to jump out of the bushes and yell that she's on Candid Camera.
Gatter chuckles. "Right, right. Fair enough. I just… thought I'd ask while it was on my mind. Dana mentioned it, shortly before she, ah. Lost consciousness. And I haven't really been able to ask about it since," he says, giving a rictus smile while his eyes wander about over vistas seen only in memory.
He takes a breath and drags himself back to the present. "In any case! Thank you for coming by; I appreciate it."
Elisabeth's frown is a tight one. "Why did Dana lose consciousness, Dr. Gatter? Is she all right?"
At that question, some of the animation seems to drain from Gatter, leaving him still and silent. The silence stretches for a moment, his gaze impassive… only then does he speak.
"Agent Carrington was quite seriously injured two weeks ago. You've heard, no doubt, that during the worst of the wildfire, a ferry sunk on the Hudson, shortly before the river itself caught fire?" he asks, his voice dispassionate. "Agent Carrington and I were on it, returning from a briefing at Fort Jay. During the initial explosion, she was struck in the side by a large piece of shrapnel moving at considerable velocity; it perforated her abdominal cavity. There was significant internal bleeding and damage to the liver. Agent Carrington very quickly went into shock; some of the things she said thereafter were not entirely lucid, but that particular one seemed to be." Gatter is silent for a moment, brow faintly furrowed. "It was… terrible. Terrible. Terrible," he says, voice dispassionate as a surgeon's.
"She is in intensive care, but stable, the last I heard. And apparently she listed me as next in line to handle transmissions received by WRAY via the auroral radio — hence this meeting. And… I believe that is the limit of my ability to contribute constructively on that particular topic, I'm afraid," he says, faintly apologetic — a doctor delivering inconclusive results.
Elisabeth looks appalled – she clearly had no idea. "How the fuck did I not— Jesus." She drags her hands down her face. "I was out in the fires a lot, I didn't see her on my casualty list." Probably because her day job doesn't get a list like that and because it didn't happen here at RayTech so the security teams here didn't include it on her debrief; the building itself was attacked at about the same time she was out there taking on firestarters but Carrington's injury wasn't here in the building… but that's no excuse. "Thank you for letting me know that. I'll check in on her."
Christ. The agent doesn't deserve to lay forgotten somewhere. And if the woman was asking about cobalt, it could be important. "If I can get through to Michelle, I'll have her on the phone as soon as possible. Is there… anything else I can do for you, Dr. Gatter? To make things easier for you?" Or otherwise help him?
Gatter's dispassionately composed expression remains for a moment longer… then he exhales, and that, too, leaves him. What remains on his face is tiredness, but he musters a smile regardless. "You already have, if you can get through to Dr. Cranston. Maybe she'll know what to make of this. Though… if you happen to see Agent Carrington… give her my best, will you? Tell her she has to get better if we're to play Monopoly," he chuckles. "I've meant to head down there to see her, but…" he trails off.
But the world is ending is the most applicable ending to that sentence, but that's something Gatter has made a habit of not saying aloud, save when absolutely necessary.
Noting his expression, Elisabeth can't help the slight nod of acknowledgment of his weariness and the reason he hasn't gone by to see Carrington. "Yeah," she says quietly. "I get it. Dr. Gatter…. " She pauses and then sighs heavily as she moves to stand up. I'm sorry that you have to know what you know seems more than a little inadequate. Instead, she tells the man in an even tone, "The weight of what you know can make it feel like you're alone as you drown. I have a little experience with that." This is not the first time she's faced it down.
Blue eyes search his features and she doesn't try to hide from him the same weariness he's feeling. "If you'd like to talk… my door is open." She cannot offer much, but she can be there for the people who have to live with the knowledge of what's coming. Even though it seems unlikely to her that the man will take her up on that. She pauses only a moment longer then simply nods at him as she heads toward the door. "I'll let you know if I get through to Michelle."
Gatter only smiles. "Appreciated, on all counts," he says… right before something starts insistently beeping. Immediately his eyes dart over to it. "Oh for — no rest for the wicked, as Doctor Pride says. Thank you again," he says, and he's already racing over to the console to examine it.