fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

If anyone had hoped for good weather for the picnic, their wish had been granted as the day turned out to be sunny and warm. Everything had been cleaned up, spiffed up and ~~bedazzled~~ ~~dazzled~~ made as perfect as possible for the new arrivals. They deserved at least a few moments of pleasantness before the weirdness started to sink in.

May whatever deity they believed in help them now.

As usual, there were long tables set up with food and drinks, a table of nametags, and two signs: one listing the Big Sibling/Little Sibling pairings, and one listing rooms and roommates for the new students. With everything in place, the picnic was ready to begin.

[OCD is up!! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here and here, in an effort to keep browsers from breaking for as long as possible.]

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"You're right," Nathan agreed, "that is an odd question. I'd tell you that it's July of 1876, but this is hardly weather befitting of a July day."

Well. Maybe a particularly miserable, very special sort of July day.

"January 3, 2009," Tyler said quietly, with a shake of his head. "Good thing it's not July, though. This would be miserable weather for July."

"Two thous--"

Now was the part of the conversation where Algren was going to have to stop and stare.

"It's bad enough I've found myself off the coast of Maryland, I've managed to jump ahead over a century while I was at it." That had been one hell of a bottle of whiskey. "It's no wonder, I suppose, that I'm teaching history. I'm part of it."

"... that was kind of where I was going with that question," Tyler admitted. "I jumped back ten years, but that's not in the same league."

He added, almost apologetically, "You get used to time travel being normal."

"Are you sure that's something I want to get used to?" Algren looked around again, eyebrows furrowed, trying to take this revelation in stride. And failing. "I suppose it's safe to say that I've missed... more than a little bit between yesterday and today."

"More than your normal night drinking, yeah," Tyler agreed with a little bit of a wince. "I have no idea where to even start. What do you need to know?"

"If I knew what it was that I should be asking about," Algren pointed out, "I wouldn't have to ask what I missed." A pause for consideration. "Anything particularly groundbreaking between then and now would be appreciated, I suppose. If nothing comes to mind, I suppose I'll have to learn as I go."

Little things like man learning to fly and both world wars were going to be fascinating, perhaps.

"It's more a question of too much coming to mind," Tyler said, because 130 years was a bit much to get in one go. "I'll try. Um ... you missed about five wars, women have the vote, and technology's changed a lot." He tried to remember what Eliza had wanted to know about. "We go into outer space sometimes. There's filmed entertainment. And computers, that's a whole huge thing. And different kinds of weapons."

As an afterthought, he added, "Oh, and there are more states. We have 50 now."

Different weapons didn't surprise Algren. He knew intimately the disparate contrasts which different groups of people alone could hold.

Guns against arrows...

"Fifty states, women have the vote, and..." He raised an eyebrow. "Man going into space?"

Beyond hot air balloons, leaving the ground was a somewhat difficult concept to swallow. Nevermind leaving the planet behind entirely.

"Yeah, we went to the moon about 40 years ago," Tyler supplied, in the tone of one who didn't find this so very marvelous at all.

But, then, Tyler didn't find much marvelous.

"And now it's mostly experimenting to see how long we can last up there. There's a space shuttle where astronauts hang out for months. We haven't left the galaxy yet, though. The technology's not quite there."

Nathan's gaze drifted upward for a moment as he contemplated the implications of such a move.

"For the most part, I imagine that it would just be... empty, up there."

Hence the name. Space.

"You're telling me that man really has nothing better to do with their time than spend months on end just sitting around in one place, in the middle of nothing."

"They're ... I don't know, growing plants in zero gravity. Watching goldfish float. Government keeps telling us it's a really important way to spend our money."

He shrugged a little. "There are worse ways people spend time, I guess."

"The government has its way of telling people exactly what is and isn't worth the money it's spending," Algren scoffed. "It would seem, for all things have changed, they really have remained the same."

Floating goldfish. Honestly.

"Pretty much," Tyler agreed. "Big shiny things, always worth the money. Things that might make a difference in people's lives, not so much. So it goes."

He was starting to get curious about this Algren. "What did you do for a living in 1876?"

"I was a Captain, for a while. Serving in the 7th Cavalry Regiment." Nathan frowned briefly, and then managed to pull his expression into a somewhat more neutral one. "I left for a time. To pursue..."

How had Zeb put it?

"... A short-lived career in the theater. Sales. Take your pick. I was on my way to another job as Captain when I found myself here."

Tyler noticed the frown, but didn't comment on it. The story behind it might explain why his new co-teacher seemed more cynical about the government than he'd expect from a military man, anyhow.

But that was something for another day.

For today, he just nodded, and said, "I've done time in sales myself. Done a lot of things, really, but I went to high school here. It's almost as much home as anyplace is."

"Well, then. With any luck, I'll manage to get over the culture shock quickly. I'll have to, if I'm going to be teaching about my yesterday to a group of children who may very well be from tomorrow."

...

That almost made sense, Nathan decided, if you picked at it for a while.

It completely made sense to Tyler. "Tomorrow, if not another galaxy entirely," he said. "I usually have office hours Monday -- want to stop by then and try to write a syllabus?"

"I'll make a point of it," Algren agreed with a nod. "We can compare notes. Pick out what made America tick before my time, and where it went from there before yours."

"I'll think about it over the weekend," Tyler promised. "And my office is number eighteen."

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Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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