damned_institute | Day 44: Sun Room, Second Shift

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Day 44: Sun Room, Second Shift

[from here]

He really had beat the rush. Suzaku found a chair as close to the corner and as far from the bulletin as he could, and turned it to face the wall before curling up in it. His nurse frowned at him again, but she was still being cooperative, and frankly he didn't care what she had to say in the slightest. He didn't care even if he got sedated. All he cared about was finally having a few moments to himself, to sort out what Euphie's love meant and what the hell Lelouch's problem was.

It felt like he had all the pieces of a puzzle and was just too stupid to figure out how they fit together. What Lelouch had said about Shirley at breakfast and the tone he'd taken with Euphie on the board, Lelouch asking how Suzaku was, Lelouch dying. . . "All we can do is move forward and look out for the ones we care about." Euphie struggling to get out her last words, pain overtaking Suzaku's consciousness while he fought pathetically to carry out Lelouch's order. . . The last couple days, when he'd felt like he was finally figuring this out, seemed so far away now.

There were a couple things that were certain, at least: he hated what Lelouch had done, he always would. But he -- he didn't hate Lelouch, and he hadn't for a while now, and that wasn't going to change. And he didn't have much time, because everyone but Suzaku was terrifyingly mortal. And Lelouch was an idiot, but he still wasn't sure about the how and why of that one yet.

[for the Saucinator]

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"Good morning," Recluse replied, although to him it was very nearly an oxymoron. At least the rather odd encounter with Piper had made him less likely to strangle something today.

"I don't think we've met before. Stefan Richter," He held out his hand, keeping the careful daytime veneer of politeness intact for the moment.

Stefan, huh? The name was ringing a bell; something from the last several days, Indy thought. Nobody he'd met, but maybe from the bulletin--ah. It was that argument in ancient Greek, with the people who claimed to have found some lost island with Pandora's Box on it. The other guy had been called "Marcus," which was an easy name for him to remember.

Might not be the same person, but it was worth a shot. "Dr. Indiana Jones," Indy introduced himself, accepting the handshake. He'd noticed the other man's size right away; the red eyes, though, threw him for a bit of a loop. Did he get those from Pandora's Box? Indy wondered with slightly shaky amusement. Something certainly seemed odd about this character.

"Actually, I think we might have met before," he added in ancient Greek, watching to see how Stefan Richter reacted.

Recluse shook Jones' hand, doing his best for the second time that day to not grind the other man's knuckles together.

"Aah. So you were the mysterious passerby," Recluse responded in the same language. He was using it with rather surprising frequency in this place. "I'd been wondering who you were. I believe Marcus said he would tell you about our findings, but he never returned your message."

"I was." Crushing grip there. Indy took his hand back and tried to find a subtle way to massage his knuckles.

"It seems this is a lucky break, then. I'd be interested to hear more about what the two of you found," he continued in ancient Greek--secrecy seemed to be important to these guys, so he might as well play along. He wasn't sure he'd believe a word of whatever Richter was about to tell him, but at least an archaeological fish tale would be an interesting change of pace.

"Frankly, Marcus is overly secretive about this. I have no idea why, as it conflicts spectacularly with his overall character," Recluse replied as a disclaimer. "But I suppose for his sake I should ask you not to tell this to others. It is on the far side of unbelievable, regardless."

"We heard about the Fountain of Zeus in the mid 1920s. There was some evidence that it might be able to cure Marcus, who was at that time suffering from the effects of mustard gas. Through a rather complicated series of events, we stole an early copy of Herodotus' Histories, which gave the location of the island which held the Fountain, hidden at the bottom of a structure known as the Well of the Furies, which was guarded by several still very operable and deadly traps." He decided to skip the entire interlude that involved meeting the Furies themselves, because frankly, that would slow the story down, and he didn't have a love for rambling the way that Marcus always had when he told stories before.

"We deactivated the traps and made our way to the bottom of the Well. The Fountain was there as described, full of water that had a golden glow to it. We both drank from it, and Marcus was instantly cured. I realized that there was likely a nearby source for the water within the caves, so we searched the area and eventually found a hidden chamber containing a four by six by four box made out of some sort of jet black material that when tested, seemed indestructible. Its lid was slightly open and something inside was emitting golden light. There was an inscription in Greek on the wall that read 'Here lies power.'" Written by Tartaros and Gaia, the first to find the box.

"I opened the box, releasing whatever was trapped inside. It was released, and the greatest portion of it entered or passed through Marcus and myself. It changed us, more drastically than this Institute would permit me to show," he gestured to his eyes for what proof he had. "When the light was gone, nothing remained in the box. We would have done a more thorough search of the island, but the energy released combined with a strong storm caused the whole cavern to flood and partially collapse. We were unable to return to the site after that." Frankly, he hadn't needed to. That was when he'd finally gotten the sense to leave Marcus behind.

Indy recognized this story almost immediately--not because any of the details were familiar, but because he'd made a career of telling dozens of variations on it. The essential plot rarely varied, and this tale was no exception: I found an artifact which led me on a wild goose chase to a long-forgotten ancient archaeological site, where an improbable series of events happened that led to my finally getting my hands on a priceless treasure, the likes of which could add untold wealths of knowledge to human understanding; then I lost it and can't even prove it existed in the first place. And that's why I can't justify my travel expenses to the dean. If his stories sounded as absurd to other people as this one did to him, no wonder people rarely bought into them.

There could be grains of truth in it, he supposed. The well water sounded a bit like his own brush with the Grail. That there would be traps in a place like the one Richter described didn't come as a surprise. But Indy was pretty sure he remembered his Histories, and he was pretty sure it didn't include any references to a Fountain of Zeus. He could think of a number of mentions of other fountains, but nothing even remotely close to a description like this. Had they actually found a site and romanticized their results, or was this guy just cracked?

"Where did you say you heard about this fountain?" he asked in carefully measured tones, although he knew Richter hadn't said anything about it. "I was working as an archaeologist in the mid-1920s too, and I usually got wind of the rumors about that sort of thing. Apparently my copy of Herodotus is missing that passage as well."

"As I said, we needed one of the earliest copies, from before revisions were made. Any mention of the island--Praxidae--was removed by the time that the text became widely circulated. Only one known copy remained, and we stole it from the London Museum.

"I'm quite aware that this leaves me with little proof, especially when the samples I collected from the Well are now long ago used, but frankly, enough odd things happen in this Institute alone. I have no reason to lie about something like this." It was just telling an origin story. That was one of the favorite pastimes of any hero or villain who didn't have some melodramatic dark and mysterious past.

Now Indy was even more skeptical, because he'd spent the mid-1920s teaching in the archaeology department at London University, and he'd never heard a word about a museum heist. Even if there'd been a cover-up, he didn't believe for a minute that something that big wouldn't have leaked--not with all the ties his colleagues had to the museum world, and not with the way they drank at faculty parties.

For now, he relegated the story to the mental territory of wishful thinking. Might be worth looking up when he got home, if he happened to have some free time. If the site did exist and there was anything left of it to excavate, Indy knew just the man for the job.

"Certainly makes for quite the story," he commented, thinking of all the reasons someone would have to lie about something like this, even in here. He could come up with plenty. Come to think of it, he'd never heard of either of their work, either. Indy might be more of a field-work guy, but he kept pretty well up on the journals and usually recognized the names of his fellow archaeologists when they were introduced. This just kept getting fishier. "If you don't mind my asking, were the two of you already practicing archaeology before that?"

"We weren't. We were soldiers of fortune after the Great War." They weren't archaeologists at all, they just needed the artifacts. "Also, I find it relatively unlikely that we are even from dimensions close enough to contain the same artifacts. No one else here seems to be from a dimension near mine." If he had to get into explaining interdimensional travel as well, this could take quite a while.

"Hold on; I think I misunderstood you," Indy cut in sharply, leaning forward. "When you say dimensions, do you mean 'dimensions'?" He said the last word in English, to make sure he was getting the point here before he dismissed Richter as being completely off his rocker. If they were gearing up for another conversation about other worlds and magic and outer space, it might be time to excuse himself in favor of another session with the bulletin board.

"Yes." Recluse sighed. Wonderful. This was going to be so much fun to have to deal with. "And if I won't be taken seriously on the subject, then it would be better to avoid speaking on it. But you might have noticed how many people here are completely convinced that they come from somewhere that can't possibly be the planet Earth that you know. Either that means everyone except for you is delusional, or it might actually have some truth to it." He'd ruled out the idea that this was within his dimension within the first few hours he'd been here. It hadn't been a difficult realization to come to.

"Out of curiosity, what year was it where you were before arriving here?"

Indy leaned back again and folded his arms. "I'm listening. I'm sure you can understand why I might be slightly skeptical, after hearing a claim like that." It wasn't as though he had anything more important to do; he was up to his neck in spare time during the day. Might as well hear out another potential crackpot theory. As much as he hated to admit it, there was some small chance that a multiple-dimension theory, like the time travel, could be part of what was going on here.

"1938," he answered shortly, wondering where this was going.

"Yes, if I did not come from a place and time where such things border on the common, then I would not believe it for a moment." He could admit, it sounded even more outlandish than anything the science fiction dime novels he'd read before his change could have managed.

"Marcus and I found the Fountain in 1930. By 1932, there had been a major battle within an East Coast city involving Marcus and his allies versus an invading army of giant automatons. Their success meant the passage of the Citizen's Crime Fighting Act in 1937, officially allowing superheroes to legally arrest criminals." Recluse's tone was completely even, despite the fact that this was not the most pleasant subject for him personally.

"The last date I remember before arriving here was February 27th, 2007. I'd rather not recount everything that happened during the intervening seventy years, for the sake of brevity."

"Obviously I should pick up the evening paper more often," Indy replied dryly when he'd processed all that. On the face of it, the entire story was ridiculous. Automatons, superheroes, alternate dimensions--hokum, surely, his instincts told him. But the theory of multiple dimensions did fit with stories like Keman's, that insistence on the impossible that had been so out of place in people who sounded so rational otherwise.

Still, it would take a lot more than a few anecdotes from people in a mental hospital to convince Indy that the idea was worthy of any credence. He was willing--provisionally--to accept time travel because there was so much evidence in favor of it here; it was the only way to explain what had happened to him. This was much less tangible. And was this guy really suggesting that he and Marcus had become...

"It sounds like Pandora's Box changed you quite a bit." Not that Indy was any closer to accepting that, either. Still, he uncrossed his arms to show that he was taking a stab at less openly skeptical listening. "Go on."

"What sort of finds have you made? You seemed quite willing to accept the fact that we'd found the box before in your messages," Recluse asked. If Jones had found anything supernatural, then there really was no excuse for not believing what Recluse had to say.

"The changes were mostly gradual. Over time, we became much, much stronger than any human could ever be. Marcus gained the ability to fly, and eventually to bring down lightning if needed in a fight. The changes I experienced were more physically drastic. My eyes changed to the red they are now, and became increasingly photosensitive and eventually taking on an internal glow, which I could display if it were night time now." He frankly wouldn't want it to happen during the day, he would most assuredly be completely blinded by the light if his eyes became any more sensitive.

"The rest of me turned near-black, and eight large spider limbs grew from along my spine." He'd looked quite monstrous, but that had suited him well.

Indy tried to remember what, exactly, he'd said in those messages; he was pretty sure it had been the same extreme doubt tempered by politeness and vague professional curiosity he was expressing now. In any case, his own finds didn't matter; that no one could explain the power of the Ark in 1938 because it was locked up in a warehouse wasn't an argument for the accuracy of absurd claims about becoming Superman. He decided to head that argument off before it could get started.

"What finds do most archaeologists make?" He shrugged. "A statue or two, a bunch of rocks, an old cup. Very interesting if you're into that sort of thing, but nothing to get worked up over for anyone who isn't a scholar. Nothing like Pandora's Box." Some days that seemed to be one of the few mythical artifacts he hadn't run across yet, Indy reflected. Maybe he should get on it. "Of course I was curious to hear the story."

Here was another full list of dubious claims, although Indy figured at least these would probably be easy enough to test. There were only so many tricks you could pull at Landel's, with the limited resources available. "So what happened?" he asked, gesturing to Richter. Indy noticed a distinct lack of large spider limbs about the man.

Recluse made a quiet, derisive snort. "That is far from the best lie I've ever heard. I told you what I found, regardless of whether it could mark me as delusional. It's only polite to give the same in return, is it not?"

"Most of the alterations were gone the moment I awoke here. My senses are still sharper than a human's, but to a lesser extent than before. Apart from that, I have been left with nothing beyond normal human strength and what I know how to make or steal for myself."

Indy didn't like the turn this conversation was taking. "What good would it do you, other than satisfying idle curiosity? I'll be happy to tell you some stories if that's what you want to hear, but neither one of us has any way to back up our assertions in here."

It was pretty convenient that Richter would have magically lost everything that marked him as out of the ordinary--should've seen that line coming. Surely the guy couldn't be leveling with him, which made Indy all the more irritated about being chided for not launching into a full recitation of his finds. He wondered if there was any way to get to that Marcus guy before Richter talked to him; see how their stories compared.

"Possibly that is all it would be, but when someone is hiding the truth for no discernible reason, I become more curious. If you wish to continue to disbelieve what I have said, it does not bother me in the slightest. I know it to be true, and that is really all that matters to me." He still had some proof in the change that his eyes underwent once the night started, but he already had enough to do tonight beyond trying to convince one stubborn archaeologist that what he said was the truth.

"Truth is a very subjective concept, Mr. Richter. I'm more interested in facts," Indy said. Good old 101 opening lecture--amazing how often it came in handy in everyday life. Especially here, where the truth was so nebulous that facts were all you had to try to piece it together. And not many of those, at that.

I don't care if you believe me didn't make for a very convincing argument, and unsurprisingly, Indy didn't find himself very convinced. Moreover, he didn't trust this guy. But he didn't particularly want to make an enemy of him, either. Indy couldn't deny that there was a chance this crazy multiple-dimension theory was right, and if Richter knew something about how it worked, he might be a useful man to know. Aside from the potential for ridicule (which wasn't one Indy was terribly concerned about, after this conversation), there really wasn't much of a reason to conceal his finds, either. It might not hurt to say something, he decided. As a gesture of goodwill.

"That 'old cup' is more commonly known as the Holy Grail," he said, trying not to sound as grudging about it as he felt.

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Day 44: Sun Room, Second Shift

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