The Adventures Of The Boy Geniuses (Backdated to before the speed-dating)

[clockwork_doc]

Doc's excited about this. He hasn't been able to get to a junk shop in a long while. His old place for getting parts is a sadly distant memory at this point (plus, given he'd first heard about it in connection with Aubrey, he's not sure he could go back). And now he's got a friend on-hand who understands just how it feels to find something new and

Comments

[findaconstant]

"Isn't it?"

Dan's as bright eyed and bushy tailed as ever. Here he is, in a junk shop full of awesome gadgets, with Doc Brown.

AWESOME.

"I can't even identify some of the stuff in here - a woman named Suzie mentioned something about alien technology, so... I mean, I wouldn't know where to start, with that. But... it's here. Somewhere." He squints at a nearby box.

[clockwork_doc]

"Alien technology?" Doc may actually be salivating. He apparently sometimes gets a little too into his gadgets. "That's incredible." Then he chuckles a bit. "Of course, this is Chicago. Maybe I should have been more surprised to hear there wasn't any of that in here."

Doc takes the squinting as an invitation to go rooting through said box. There is science stuff here, and he intends to get at it. "Hmmm. . . ." He pulls out a large black box with some different-colored buttons and lights on the top, and what looks like some sort of corkscrew attached to the bottom and frowns at it. "Some sort of drill, maybe?" he posits with a shrug.

[findaconstant]

"Well, with the Rift..." Dan begins, then trails off when his attention is caught by something Over There. "I wouldn't be surprised if a spaceship fell through, one day."

Unless it has, already. He still wouldn't be surprised.

He peers over at the object in Doc's hand. "Um. Maybe?"

[clockwork_doc]

Doc nods in agreement. "Especially with all the not-quite-human species coming through. . . ." He pauses thoughtful. "Actually, I suppose a spaceship HAS come through. If you'd classify the TARDIS as such." The acronym does stand for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, after all.

Doc experimentally presses a button. Nothing happens. He shrugs and sets it aside. "Damned if I know." He glances over to where Dan was looking before. "What did you see?"

[findaconstant]

"Ah! That. I thought I was forgetting something."

Of course, when Dan thinks spaceship, his mind defaults to flying saucers filled with little green men. You'd think that he'd have programmed his brain to to otherwise, by now, but...

"Oh, I think it was just part of an old transformer."

[clockwork_doc]

Doc chuckles. "I think it's a 'she,' technically," he says. Funny how natural that sounds now, that he's met her a couple of times. What a year here will do to you. . . .

Doc spots it and nods, going over for a look. "Yup, looks like it. They really do have a little bit of everything here, don't they?" He investigates a nearby shelf, finding what looks like the front half of a skeleton to some robot cat. Doc chuckles and playfully pats its ears. "Hello kitty."

The thing replies with a rather drawn-out, demonic-sounding "meow." Doc jumps back, a brief wind whipping around his legs and flaring out his coat.

[findaconstant]

Dan blinks, following Doc's movements. "The - the TARDIS has a gender? Really? Or is it like... you know, how all ships are referred to as feminine? ...whoa."

Part of Dan still thinks that even though that cat is ridiculously creepy, it might just be a toy. The other part, though - the part that's spent the last four months in Chicago - says otherwise. He takes a step back, matching Doc's distance.

[clockwork_doc]

"Well, the one here is sentient -- it talks, through telepathy," Doc explains. "From what I've felt, it just has a feminine presence to it. I couldn't tell you about them in general."

Logically, Doc knows that the awful sound of the meow was probably caused by either half the toy being missing or a dying battery. On the off-chance it's possessed, though, he's going to leave it alone and look at something else. He edges away, heading toward a spot with some normal-looking kitchen appliances. He picks up a coffee grinder, ascertains it's not going to bite him, and shows it to Dan. "Still works," he reports, turning the crank. Of course, they've got a perfectly good coffee machine back at the hotel, but who cares when there are handheld coffee grinders to be found?

[findaconstant]

"Huh."

A sentient TARDIS. Cool.

Dan follows close behind Doc, much like an eager student would. "I wonder how old it is." Not that it matters; Dan's just thinking out loud. "Are you a big coffee drinker?"

[clockwork_doc]

It is indeed.

"I don't know. Apparently old enough that electric motors weren't around or in vogue yet." He turns the crank again, just for something to do with his hands. "And fair, I suppose. I tend to start the day with a cup, and I drink a lot more when I'm working on something." He looks through the other appliances for a moment --

And then freezes. Tucked in with the odds and ends is -- well, you might mistake it for another, odder-looking coffee grinder. But that's not what it is at all. Doc stares for a long moment. "Dan? Do -- do you see what I see?"

If he does, he's going to see a large white cylinder with the name "Mr. Fusion" on it.

[findaconstant]

"I only really drink a cup in the morning," he says, conversationally. "Any caffeine later than noon translates in to no sleep."

He looks, following Doc's gaze. "I don't - OH. Oh. Wow. Is that really...?"

Dan swears he walked past this box last time he was here. He's pretty sure he even looked inside. How did he miss that?

[clockwork_doc]

"Hence why I only drink heavily when I'm working," Doc agrees. Which is the majority of the time, so. . . .

Who knows -- maybe it was hidden behind something else, maybe it didn't come in until after Dan left, maybe it has the ability to disappear and reappear at will. Whatever the case, it's here now. Doc cautiously reaches out a hand and picks it up. It's only the top half of the device -- there's a broken hinge on the back, for where it would connect to something else. He turns it over, and sees -- it's obviously circuitry, but what kind, he has no idea. "Great Scott," he breathes, stunned. He knows he really should expect anything in Chicago by this point, but how on earth could he have ever expected this?

[findaconstant]

Dan just watches, equally as surprised as Doc. He's not used to... well, luck. This has to be luck. When Dan is involved, that thing called fate never really rolls a nice number.

"You can still use it, right?"

[clockwork_doc]

"I don't know," Doc admits, examining it some more. "I've only seen it in -- in the movies." A flash of jealousy towards his other, fictional self goes through him. "I think there's supposed to be a lower chamber, something to collect the garbage. Though I suppose I could simply attach it to something like that. But I have no idea if it's functional. I don't even know how it works." He looks up at Dan. "This thing's supposed to be from 2015!"

He's really just in awe. He'd never expected to find anything from the movies here in Chicago. This is just amazing.

[findaconstant]

Oh, right. Dan forgot about that little detail. He blinks, again, leaning in to get a better look. "I... um. We could... check the internet?"

Because that will help.

"Or," he adds, a little hastily, "We could just... toy around with it. But I wouldn't want to, you know, break it or anything."

[clockwork_doc]

Doc can't help the chuckle that escapes him. "I don't know if they'd have anything," he says. "Besides fan theories. Though it might be interesting to see those. . . ."

He grimaces at that. "Yeah, I know," he admits, carefully turning it over again to look at the circuitry. "That's the problem with future technology. If something goes. . . ." Damn -- best find of his life here, and he's getting too nervous to actually do anything with it.