fandomhigh | Library, Sunday 12/04

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Library, Sunday 12/04

Raven was at the library early today, anxious to begin looking through the books for any mention of the "Auditors" Zoe had spoken of on the radio. She clung to what little optimism she had left that they would find a way to stop whatever it was devouring worlds and people, and reverse it for their safe returns. But if a place as powerful with magic as Kaeleer had fallen, she wasn't sure how long Fandom could stand. And the Netherverse was almost gone.

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Jen -- who'd left her world behind reluctantly, under heavy protest, and only because in the end she realized that someone had to remember them all -- had gotten in late last night, and hadn't gotten much sleep at all. Actually, she'd just spent the night going over old podcasts and exhaustively running searches on the #portalocityfail hashtag, so she hadn't gotten any sleep at all.

Still, armed with coffee, her computer, and a determined expression, she headed straight for the library, got jacked into the databanks, and got to work.

Parker was glad to see someone else teacher-or-alumni-aged here, so on returning from one of her excursions into the main stacks, she asked, "Anything useful yet?"

Jen shook her head and ran a hand over her face. "Three dozen different leads on creatures that can alter memory, or reality, and none of them come anywhere close to having an MO that lines up with what we've got so far," she admitted, and could her voice sound any more like she'd been gargling sand? Not really, no.

"I'm so glad I didn't know that before. Knowledge is great for my paranoia." Parker's voice sounded like she'd taken up smoking again.

Shut up, she was entitled.

"Gods and avatars, and completely useless summoning rituals, since half of them require either true belief, places of power that don't exist any more, or ingredients I don't see us ordering from Amazon."

"It's the ingredients you can order off Craigslist that you should worry about," Jen mumbled, only half seriously due to sleep deprivation. "And it's the part where reality is being altered without altering the timestream that . . . would have had everyone at Time Force scratching their heads if anyone noticed but me."

"Heh." Parker only had energy for a tired snort at that. "Time Force? You're a time cop?" She paused. "You don't know a Jack Harkness, do you?"

Way to remember long lost friends now.

"I recognize the name vaguely from old school records, but that's it." Jen took a gulp of coffee and poked at her screen, frowning at another useless result. "Not a colleague of mine, if that's what you're wondering."

"Too bad," Parker said quietly, wondering where Jack was. If Jack was. Or if that should be past tense now. "So, the thing that's bugging you about this is-- things disappearing without effecting other things?"

"One of the things," Jen conceded. She idly ran the fingertips of her right hand over her Chronomorpher; without Wes to help them unlock the Chronomorphers in the first place, she'd never have been a Ranger, and without every team of Rangers who'd come before -- hell, without the work she was doing at SPD now -- she wouldn't be one at all, but here she was, powers intact. "I mean, the scope of that -- it's not just changing one thing about the world. It's changing everything."

"How so?" Parker asked, curious. "I'm already overwhelmed by how many world's this thing has hit, how is what you're talking about bigger and badder?"

Jen took a breath and waved her hands in a vague -- thing that might have been intended as an illustrative gesture, but turned out as a helpless flail.

"I've changed the past before," she began. "I know what kind of effects it can have on the timeline. When this hit my world, it started slowly, but once people who were key to huge events in history started disappearing, and nothing in my part of the timeline really changed? Technology wasn't suddenly different, the balance of power hadn't changed . . . nothing."

She shrugged. "See what I mean?"

Parker frowned, tapping a fingernail on the table. "Effect is not following cause, you're saying. The present is -- frozen, except for the parts that are missing? Like taking out blocks from a building, and leaving the third story in place?"

Put like that, it was bizarre. Did Time Gravity just not work any more?

"Exactly." And really, that made so little sense to Jen that it was annoying, so she rapped her knuckles on the table harder than she meant to. "Then, factor in how it's doing this across multiple dimensions, timelines, worlds with or without high tech or magic . . . that's a lot of power."

"So someone is playing Jenga with time and space, without rhyme or reason... So." Parker wasn't even sure she knew the right questions to ask here. "With a lot of power and nothing a human would recognize as logic." She paused, considering that. "This may be harder to figure out if they really aren't human, or human-like. Or if they're using some higher physics that we just can't perceive at all."

Jen snorted and leaned back in her chair. "Strange as this may sound, I'd feel a lot better if we knew for sure that whatever's doing this isn't . . . well, mortal." She couldn't really say 'human' in good conscience.

Parker looked at her askance. "How would that be a good thing in any way?"

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"Hey you," Isabel said when she spotted Jen. "I'm glad you made it."

"Barely," Jen replied, and she wasn't so tired that she couldn't manage a smile for Isabel. "But I'm here. That's the important part, isn't it?"

That was a little sarcastic; pragmatic rationale aside, she still had some guilt about running.

"Exactly. Too other many people aren't." She'd meet that sarcasm with some reality.

Jen was a Power Ranger; ~~reality was relative~~ that came with a healthy dose of stupidly-heroic tendencies ~~much like most of Shanie's characters~~.

"And someone had to remember," she added dully.

"Someone has to fix this." Not that Isabel had the slightest idea of where to start. But it beat sitting around moping and she was pretty sure if she attempted to clean anything in Ronan's house again, he'd lock her in a closet.

Jen glanced around the library and half-smiled. "We might have to get in line for that honor."

"I'd like to get a few hits in, but I don't mind hanging to the back," she replied. "I just want my family back." It had been two weeks since the darkness had taken them and at times Isabel still caught herself unconsciously reaching for her phone to call home.

That just made Jen think of Katie, who'd been willing to risk damaging the timeline just to make sure her family was safe. Katie, who'd disappeared a week ago. All of her Ranger team both at home and in Newtech, and really -- every team throughout history was sort of an extended family.

"I'll just have to keep my marksmanship skills up," she tried to joke, although that fell pretty flat. Then, more seriously: "I'm sorry about your family. Your world."

"I'm just one of not so many at this point," Isabel shrugged. "There's a lot of other people in the same boat."

"Wyatt and I tried to get them to leave. To come to the island with us." She still felt guilty about that. "But they didn't understand. Whatever this was. It had changed everything. I had to start over, explaining about all the alien stuff."

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