OOM From The Future: The Dimension-Hopping Kid

[claudiometer]

Bristol Sector
Warehouse 13
South Dakota
2014

"Mandelbrot's in heaven, at least he will be when he's dead...Claudia isn't prone to wearing her headphones around the Warehouse. Generally, it's better if she can keep her ears open, and it's not one of those cases where she's pissed at someone and wants to make their life difficult

Comments

[walksthebounds]

Jamie hates coming through in buildings; it almost always means there's someone there, and awkwardness inevitably ensues.

However, in this case, the someone seems to have some kind of music thingummy in, which might make her easy enough to slip by.

. . . Jamie attempts to saunter very quietly, in case she opens his eyes and catches him, and starts trying to come up with plausible explanations for his presence in a warehouse.

[claudiometer]

"Oh, plenty of people think he's got that going for him. Just look at the size of the crowd. And from a technical standpoint, he definitely knows what he's doing. I just got tired of all the hype around him a long time ago."
She has a feeling this show still won't be her thing, but she doesn't turn it off yet. Dude hasn't done anything other than walk onstage yet, really; she might as well give it a chance. The things she does for her brother, really.

[k39zzz]

Well, walk onstage and tune his guitar a bit, anyway. (It's an old guitar, the metal hardware tarnished, the wood's finish worn down to almost nothing; why would Lancaster switch out his trademark blue Fender Jaguar for this old clunker?)

Then, without looking up, he starts playing a slow, jangly blues tune, tapping his foot to the beat...

"♫ I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees
I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees
Asked the Lord for mercy, said 'Help me if you please.' ♫"

[doyousmellfudge]

The moment the music begins, Artie, at the next desk over, goes absolutely still.

For three seconds. Then he turns in his seat to look at Claudia's monitor. He catches the tail-end of a closeup shot of the guitarist's fingerpicking before the camera cuts to a wide shot of the stage.

"Wait go back go back--"

[claudiometer]

"No can do, Artie, it's a live feed. I'm sure they'll cut back to the closeup in a second, don't panic."
She can see why Joshua took to the guy's work; he always was more of a blues fan than Claudia's ever been. But mostly, her current review stands at 'WTF,' and Artie's reaction? Only adding to that.

[walksthebounds]

Jamie shifts a little in his seat.

He has mixed feelings on the blues. Too many of the songs are about going home, or not going home, or making dumb decisions and losing the things you're looking for.

You can't deny a song's a good song when it manages to get at that feeling - Jamie's a reasonably cheerful person, most of the time, and he doesn't much like dwelling.

[doyousmellfudge]

"♫ I went down to the crossroads, tried to flag a ride ♫"

Artie is inches from the screen, staring at Johnny Lancaster as he moves into the second verse.

"♫ I went down to the crossroads, tried to flag a ride ♫"

"How--how old is this man?"

"♫ Nobody seemed to know me, everybody passed me by ♫"

[claudiometer]

Claudia shrugs. "I dunno, about my age, I think? Why?"
She doesn't really want to ask the question (this is the part where Artie tells her to be careful what she wishes for, isn't it?), but she figures if Artie's likely to answer it anyway, she might as well. And if it explains why the guy's playing a song from the Stone Ages, so much the better!

[doyousmellfudge]

Artie whirls to face her. "Where is that concert??"

[claudiometer]

"New Orleans, I think. Announcer dude didn't exactly specify beyond Louisiana." But really, how many big music festivals are there in Shreveport or Baton Rouge?
"You planning to tell me why this is wigging you out so much sometime this millennium?"

[doyousmellfudge]

As soon as Claudia says 'New Orleans,' Artie's back over at his computer, putting in a request for a chartered plane. "You're going there. Right now."

[claudiometer]

"Artie. Why?"
She shoots Jamie a look that's somewhere between apologetic and annoyed. Just because she can tell this is WTF-worthy doesn't mean she knows what the WTFery is, and if Artie's throwing her into this headfirst, some answers before she got there would really be excellent.
(Especially since she's pretty sure that whatever this is, it's some severely bad mojo, even as Artifacts go. Anything that rattles Artie this badly can't be good.)

[doyousmellfudge]

"♫ You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown ♫"

"Because if you don't--" Artie points sharply at Johnny Lancaster's face on the video feed-- "then that man is going to die."

"♫ You can run, you can run, tell my friend Willie Brown ♫"

"I'll brief you when you're en route. GO."

"♫ That I'm standin' at the crossroads, I believe I'm sinkin' down... ♫"

[claudiometer]

--okay no seriously how does he get that from two minutes of a concert?
"...'kay, fine," she says, "but if it's that bad I don't think I should be going by myself."

[walksthebounds]

Jamie can tell where this is going a mile off.

". . . I'm about to get volunteered, aren't I," he says, to nobody in particular. "Do I get to find out how dangerous it's likely to be first?"

[claudiometer]

"We should be so lucky. But considering he's gonna be running two cases at once... it'd be safer than you staying here and running amok in the Warehouse."
After all, on a case, there are a lot less ways for things to get fun.