Enter Dr. Bishop

[dr_bishop]

Who: Dr. Walter Bishop and anyone who'd like to join (open)
When: Mid Day
Where: Lobby
What: Walter and Gene check in.

Comments

[bluesuit_handy]

"The guest rooms don't move," said Handy, "so it makes enough sense that they're assigned. We have..." he thought for a moment, "ten rooms or so on each floor, all the floors from the first to the third are more or less filled, plus a few on the two floors above that...at least thirty? There's a roster being kept."

[bluesuit_handy]

Handy tried not to laugh at the pun, but that lasted for all of two seconds before he was laughing along with Walter. Sure, the guy seemed to be operating on a slightly different platform than the rest of humanity, but he really didn't see what was so bad that he'd been put in an institution. And taken away his chalk, apparently.

"I travel, mostly," he replied. "Or I did before I came here. And if people need help wherever I happen to be, well." He smiled. It was an extremely pared-down version of his life, but it gave Walter at least the gist of it. "D'you believe in aliens?" he asked suddenly.

[dr_bishop]

"I assume that you mean extra-terrestrial beings, as I have seen proof of alien pathogens and once had a lovely holiday weekend with a resident alien. While I do question my governments statistics on illegal aliens, I don't think that anyone really questions the immigrants actual existence." Walter leaned in as if to whisper conspiratorially, but never lowered his voice. "In fact, unless this experience proves to be a dream, I believe that this extratemporal bubble is shaping up to be a parallel reality, which would make us both aliens!" He shook with excitement, and never noticed that he didn't directly answer the question to the affirmative.

[bluesuit_handy]

"That's exactly what I mean," nodded Handy. "Dunno, though--can we be aliens if there isn't any native life? Unless the native life is whoever or whatever brought us here..." He stopped himself, waving off the semantics to get back to what he'd been talking about. "What I mean is that I'm sort of an extraterrestrial."

[dr_bishop]

"Extra to the planet earth? How fascinating! And here I was thinking that you were intimating that you belonged to that Doctors Without Borders group." Walter slapped a hand on the table. "Wonderful! This is wonderful my boy!"

He then noticed a waiter standing patiently and discretely next to him. "Oh, well hello there. I should like a grilled cheese sandwich on white bread, and an orange soda. Could you please cut the sandwich diagonally?"

[bluesuit_handy]

"Oh, them. No." Handy smiled. "Wouldn't be too bad a thing, though. No, I travel in space. I thought I ought to tell you because I'm not the only Doctor in the hotel--I mean, I'm not the only Doctor who just calls himself Doctor and has this face. Sort of an accident."

[dr_bishop]

"It is a shame that Peter isn't here. He is an excellent translator, explaining to people what I mean when I say things that I thought made sense in the first place. He could probably do the same for you. For instance," Walter explained. "I have no idea if you mean that there are more Interplanetary Doctors Without Borders here, or if you mean that your race of beings has evolved to all look alike, or if everyone who has been caught up in this hotel has post-graduate degrees." He patted at The Doctors hand again. "Peter would have understood, he has that sort of mind, I do find it invaluable."

[bluesuit_handy]

Handy grinned. He really was too used to people who either already knew his story or already knew enough to puzzle it out based on his vague explanations.

"I mean that I'm a duplicate of another one of the residents," he said more plainly. "Though there are quite a few people here with doctorates, I'll give you that. Only two of me, though. Well, three, but the other one doesn't look the same."

For some reason, he found it easy to talk to Walter. Or--not easy, exactly, since their conversation seemed to alternate between going in confused circles and striking off on tangents--but painless, at any rate. It probably had to do with how Walter seemed to take everything in stride and keep smiling. Except butterscotch pudding, of course.

[dr_bishop]

"A duplicate? Oh that is intriguing. Does your species typically duplicate?" The Doctor now had his rapt attention. "I'm sure I'll have many questions. Were you laboratory duplicated? And why doe the other duplicate not look the same?" Walter took a pen out of his pocket and began writing short hand notes on the tablecloth.

[bluesuit_handy]

"Not usually, no," replied Handy, craning his neck to look at Walter's notes. "The other one doesn't look the same because he's not actually a duplicate. My people can do this thing called regeneration, forming a new body to delay death. So he's the same person, taken from an earlier time, when he happened to have a different face."

He sat back in his chair when the waiter came back with Walter's sandwich and a plate of fish and chips for himself.

[dr_bishop]

"Well of course. Any one of us could be taken from multiple time periods in our own lives. It's entirely possible that at any given time the hotel could be populated by several versions of one being from several realities at several points in their respective lives. Imagine the likelihood that there would only be three of you here. Minuscule as best!"

Walter popped the top on his beverage. "I don't know why, but orange soda always tastes better straight from a can."

[bluesuit_handy]

"But weighed against the chances of any one particular person being here at all, the chances of me being here multiple times aren't really that good," Handy pointed out. "Besides, I don't have any memories of having been here before when I was him."

[dr_bishop]

Walter bit into his sandwich and realized that even should the two of them sit here and calculate the possibilities, they'd never scratch the surface.

"Well on that count," He started when he finished chewing. "You could be the duplicate from one reality, and your originator from another, while the different regeneration could be from yet another. They've put a bit of mayonnaise on the exterior of the bread, it makes for better browning and a wonderful little zip on the tongue. I would also like to know how many of the guests were of the belief that reality bubbles didn't exist, and to how many was this not the shock of their lifetime. And were all the people who are here taken from some version of earth at the time that they arrived." The hotel could have proclivities or attractors.