Welcome to the World of Tomorrow!

[purple_manners]

Characters: Zebediah Killgrave and Thetis
Rating: R, for brazen displays of bawdiness, ribaldry and titillation
Time Period: Modern, Near Future and Golden Age
Location: The castle entrance, the time room, the hotel lobby, Thetis's hotel room and the third floor pool
Relative Date: Maybe half an hour after this post and by extension this transmission

Comments

[rebmanroyalty]

The young woman approaching him was wearing her leather biker jacket and pants. She had been smiling and reaching out her hand until she heard the name he called her. The hand fell as did her expression. She pulled back. "What? Who gave you that name?" She was tense and ready for a fight. Her hand that she had been about to shake his with went towards her arm.

[purple_manners]

He cocked an eyebrow at her tense reaction. Weird. "Relax," he told her, "Be cool." He didn't want or need this kind of tension at a first impression, and simple mental commands like that usually went down smooth. He pulled out his phone, pulled up the messages she had sent him and then held it out for her to look at "You did. Unless you stole someone else's phone, I suppose. Someone named Thetis."

[rebmanroyalty]

The tension bled out a bit. Enough so she was comfortable in leaning forward to look at the phone. "Oh by the bloody depths..." She looked at him seeming chagrined. "Sorry about that." She was completely relaxed with him now. "It's just... I don't really go by that name and the last time it was used, whoever is in charge here used it to trick me into coming here in the first place." Plus where she came from, true names held power. "If you don't mind, could you just call me Terry? Or Theresa if you must?"

[purple_manners]

"They get you coming and going around here, don't they," he said, chuckling, as he put the phone back in his pocket. "If it's not one thing, it's another. You've got to figure that if they know us well enough to know whatever our hearts' desires are in order to write us those tickets, they'd know us well enough to know we won't appreciate crap like that one display," he shrugged, as if to say, 'what are you going to do, right?'

"Don't worry. Our little secret," he said, conspiratorially. "Some of my best friends play the whole 'secret identity' game. It's fine, really."

[rebmanroyalty]

"Looks like." She replied scowling just a little at the phone.

She smiled brightly when he said he'd keep her real name a secret. "Thank you." Something about this guy just put her at ease. Maybe it was the purple skin that reminded her of her home Rebma and some of it's denizens. She kept grinning as she rocked on her feet. "So, I remember something about a trip to the future?"

[purple_manners]

"Absolutely," he replied, smiling at her obvious enthusiasm. She'd really taken that trust and relaxation to heart! If he actually cared about earning a living, he could make a fortune as a therapist. "Come with me, and I'll give you the tour." He set off down the hall without waiting to see if she'd follow. Of course she would. He'd told her to.

"So, while we're on the topic, tell me what was on that ticket of yours," he said, conversationally. "It's got to be more interesting than the trip to a resort in Brazil I was promised."

[rebmanroyalty]

She did follow him, well not so much follow. She sped up until she was walking right next to him. "My ticket?" She chewed on her lip a bit. "It didn't really promise me anything. It's just... I thought it was from my father and he was bringing me home. Or at least bringing me to wherever he was. I had been at school, in college at the time." That was mostly the truth, leaving out that her home was in a different reality. And that she had been at that school to hide her from a war.

[purple_manners]

"Your father is the sort to send out private helicopters, is he? Impressive." Meaningless, if so, since it meant that any wealth or resources that the family might have to exploit were far beyond his reach here, but interesting nonetheless. "Some sort of businessman, then, I take it? Or perhaps just old money, perhaps."

[rebmanroyalty]

"He works," She was hesitant to explain more than that about his job as Captain of the Amber royal fleet, "but he did have an inheritance." Such as the ability to walk the pattern that gave the ability to change reality. "Neither of my parents ever had to really worry about money." She said with an easy shrug.

[purple_manners]

"It's a good way to live one's life," he replied easily. "Frees one up to concern oneself with ones higher self. More meaningful ambitions. Luckily for you," he said, turning his head and grinning, "We get to enjoy certain luxuries while we're here that the average working stiff would need to subject himself to a year of meaningless drudgery in order to gain access to, and we never have to pay the tab. Really, I don't know why everyone is so eager to get out of here."

[rebmanroyalty]

She laughed. "Well, while a bit of relaxation is all good, It can get boring after a while." She shook her head. "And I WAS trying to learn something when this whole mess dragged me away." She shrugged. "But hey, I'm getting a lot of free study time." She put her hands into the pockets of her jacket. "And I do appreciate a bit of partying. I am in college after all." She looked thoughtful. "I can see where some people feel they have a duty to escape, that there's something out there that they need to be doing." She shrugged again. "But me, personally, I don't have any urgent life threatening, world saving need to be anywhere. I'll get out of here eventually," When her dad found her, "but until then I don't really feel there's any reason to worry. After all, it's not like we're being physically threatened by whoever brought us here."

[purple_manners]

"Unless you believe in the ridiculous tales of man-eating unicorns romping about the wilderness, anyway," he chuckled. "The moment I heard that, I knew someone was having a laugh at someone else's expense, and I'm glad to have been able to share in the joke

[rebmanroyalty]

She looked just a bit uneasy at the mention of unicorns. "I haven't seen one yet, at least." She replied.

Then she was laughing again at his over the top presentation of the room. Then she took his hand. "Very well, I am ready for all the wonders and horrors of the future. Bring it on!"

[purple_manners]

Taking her hand in his own (and without much thought given to what he considered an unbecoming nervousness as pertained to the supposed unicorn threat), he laid his fingers gently upon the button beneath the nearest painting. "First, let us see the bad end," he said, pressing the button. Within moments, the room had bled away around them, leaving the two of them standing next to a broken set of stone walls in a dusty, miserable plain of pure ruin and devastation. "These silly gooses, a few decades from now, seem to have decided that nuclear war is a game that one can win. And hey, to their credit, I guess they're right. If you go a ways in that direction, you'll find some camps of irradiated and starving refugees." He pointed in the direction of one of the camps. "They're the winners, by the way."

[rebmanroyalty]

She looked around the devastation and increased the pressure on his hand just slightly. The change was drastic and took her a bit by surprise but she didn't freak out. "Is it still irradiated here?" She asked sensibly. Because if it was, she wanted to get the hell out of dodge. Otherwise... she'd seen both better and worse in the few travels she had done with her father. Though he'd rarely let them linger in places like this, mostly they were just seen they were riden through.

[purple_manners]

"Little bit, yeah," he said, his mouth tightening into a grimace. "So you're probably not going to want to push that button too much. Not if you don't want to end up as slightly-irradiated snackfood for some people who will see the meat on your bones as a sort of teasing gesture on your part."

Still holding her hand, he spun a few degrees and poked another button. "However!" He shouted, as the world bled away, only to be replaced by a luxurious hotel, the two of them standing at the end of an olympic-sized inddor pool, the decorations lavish, the atmosphere serene, "This is mere prelude to the good times to come. Believe it or not, somehow those brainless, nuke-happy savages nevertheless manage to pull off a happy ending, and we're looking at it."