Anybody home?

[mynameismarlowe]

On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again. I stared listlessly into the empty shot glass but I didn’t find any answers. I wasn’t disappointed. I leaned back in the uncomfortable stool, and beat a tattoo on the edge

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[agirlnamedchuck]

"I don't think anyone actually lives here."

This fact was actually true, and the girl named Chuck meant it as she said it, despite saying it in the quirky and observant way that those who are making a sweet observation are prone to doing. Tapping her red peep toed shoe on the floor she looked around the Hub, which she was in the middle of wandering through rather than actually being in. None of this stopped her from smiling at the stranger though.

"Unless you meant a broader definition of here, then yes, people are probably home."

[mynameismarlowe]

The voice startled me. I hadn't expected an answer. I twisted around in the spindly stool so that I could appraise my unexpected company. It was a woman. She was small and delicately put together. Her eyes were the sort of green that you could notice from across the room. Her hair fell in auburn waves around her shoulders. One look told me that she would be better company than my jacket.

I tilted my head to the side and said: "Let's say I meant the broader definition."

[agirlnamedchuck]

"Then you're right on the money. In a roundabout kind of unfamiliar way."

Chuck wasn't certain how many people actually would call this place home, but for a girl who had found herself moved from one snowy roof to another, she assumed that it if home was where you laid your head at night, then home she was. If it was where your heart was, then that was another story all together.

She moved closer, changing her path just as easily as changed the honey filled jars in her hand. "You're new, aren't you? Well, not new as in just born, but new as in not from around here."

[mynameismarlowe]

She had an interesting way of talking. It was a happy coincidence since I had happened to be interested in what she had to say. I nodded slowly and I eased away the slightly pinched look of confusion that I had been wearing since I had turned around. I figured it was no longer the fashion.

"That depends," I said. "What is around here?"

[agirlnamedchuck]

"Around here happens to be an island called Tabula Rasa."

She supposed that she could explain the exactness of what the name meant, but that knowledge was a bit overwhelming and the experience of simply being here was overwhelming as it was. "A place of second chances for people who may or may not think they actually need them."

[mynameismarlowe]

The blank slate. Later I would think the name was clever but at that moment I was still in need of a better explanation. A wiser man than I once wondered what was in a name. The answer was nothing useful.

I said: "Then I'm new."

[agirlnamedchuck]

Her smile turned into a grin, as Chuck remained half-oblivious to the jar in her hand.

"Welcome then, um, this is the Hub, it's something like a bar around here. And oh, I'm Charlotte, but you can call me Chuck."

She reached out and held out her hand in greeting.

[mynameismarlowe]

I was on an island and in a bar. The details were slow in their arrival but that they were coming at all fostered my patience. I took her hand in my own and I shook it. Another woman had once made me a similar offer when it came to her name and I had denied it. I saw no harm in accepting it now.

"Chuck," I said and I grinned at her. "I'm Phil."

Somewhere I was sure that Vivian was cursing my name.

[agirlnamedchuck]

The facts were these that as slow as the details were in coming, in all of her short time working the business of finding facts, Chuck knew that this particular heap was quite a mouthful to swallow.

"Nice to meet you, Phil." She nodded determinedly. "I guess you're kind of hankering for some solid facts to chew on? Well, the truth is that things are kind of sticky around here. No one's really a native to the island, as far as I can tell. We're kind from every when and every where, and we just appear."

[mynameismarlowe]

"When?" I repeated.

There was nothing unusual about the where and it had passed me by without so much as a thought. It was the when that required further investigation.

[agirlnamedchuck]

You see, the 'when' part was the hardest and the easiest to describe. To say that they were all time travellers in one way or another was what Chuck could do, even if it wasn't strictly honest.

"There are people from all times, and places here. Some are Romans, some are from are the future, some are just modern day folk. It's how it goes."

[mynameismarlowe]

I pressed a hand to my forehead and I blinked up at her. There was an awareness about her that convinced me that she wasn't having me on, much as I might have liked her to. I might have liked a lot of things. I might have liked a drink. I really needed a drink.

Instead I asked: "What qualifies as modern?"

[agirlnamedchuck]

Now that was a fact that Charlotte Charles had never given much thought to. While she knew when and where she was from, she had always particularly cherished the sense of nostalgia that she harbored.

She frowned a bit. "You know, I don't really know. I know where I'm from, and when it is here, but I don't think that my modern is anything like here's." She stopped realizing that she had failed to explain. "It's 2008 here."