rhubarb and chocolate chip mint with malt and sprinkles
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Box In A Box
Rating: PG (language)
Challenge: Rhubarb ‘My Treat’ #3: easy for you to say (Adam and Cassidy), Chocolate Chip Mint #12: warped
Toppings/Extras: malt (advent calendar day two), sprinkles
Wordcount: 679
Summary: Adam Kirby is good at drawing, but he still can’t explain temporal fractures.
Notes: My goodness it’s been a while since I wrote Adam Kirby! I missed him. Marina’s Treat. :) I am loving the advent calendar prompts!
On December 15th, 2983, Adam Kirby and Cassidy LaJoie were waiting anxiously for the return of the black ops team after they had vanished for about half an hour longer than they were supposed to have. Seeing as they were in possession of a time machine, this was worrying.
When the base machine-a great curving wall of controls that took up half of the room-began to emit a soft blipping that meant the capsule had found its trajectory and was making its way back to their timeframe at that very moment, they were very relieved. They both stood aside in companionable silence at the control panel as they waited for the capsule to zip into place. It didn’t take long.
Before Adam could hop up to obligingly open the hatch for them, it ripped itself open and Robyn stuck her head out.
“Well, thank fuck for that,” she said.
Adam blinked.
He didn’t have any time to comment because moments after that she had stumbled out of the capsule (in a dress, no less! He had never seen-or even imagined-Robyn Walshe wearing a dress before, although admittedly this was not a particularly showy one) and so had her teammates. Victor looked weary, Taisy looked baffled and Bradley Dekeynel looked very annoyed.
“What happened?” Adam asked warily.
“Ooh, nothing much, we just happened to fall into a temporal fracture!” Bradley snapped. “Nothing really! No big deal! It’s not like we fell down a big white hole into an alternate universe full of dancing weirdos-...”
“Brad, seriously, do you ever stop complaining?” Robyn sighed.
“Do you know what a temporal fracture looks like?” Bradley demanded. Adam had to admit that he didn’t. “It looks like nothing! Do you know what nothing looks like? It’s pink!”
“Oh, right, well, erm,” Adam stammered. His forte was science, not people. And certainly not angry people. “I didn’t... I don’t know how that happened. Was it...?”
“We collided with ourselves on the temporal pathway,” Victor said, as though that explained everything. To Adam Kirby, it did.
“Oh! You mean a sequential fracture?” Adam asked, face lighting up. “How exciting! What happened? Was it really pink?”
“Who cares what it’s called?” Bradley asked as though Adam were completely insane. “We could have been trapped in weirdoland forever!”
“Brad,” Robyn said. “That was the year 1996.”
“Rob. I don’t care!” Bradley turned on the two scientists again. “These guys were fine! They fell through the sodding crack! And I had to go and rescue them...!” He shook his head, scowling. “Do either of you mind explaining this crap to me?”
“Sorry, Bradley, we’re fresh out of crayons,” Cassidy said, deadpan.
“Oh, fuck you, Cass!”
Adam would have asked Bradley to be a little more professional, but he couldn’t think of a polite way to phrase it, and Adam would never say something that wasn’t polite. He bit his lip and made his way up to a glass blackboard, picking up a pen.
“Look, I’ll draw you a diagram if you like,” Adam said brightly, obviously having taken Cassidy’s comment a little too literally. “It’s quite simple...” He turned around and started scrawling on the board. Despite themselves, the black ops team crowded around him. They found that all of their heads were tipping to the side by the time he was nearing the end. Adam pointed to the centre. “Now, this is...”
“It’s not anything!” Bradley exclaimed. “It’s a box. Inside another sodding box. With some holes and stuff. What’s up with your perspective, by the way?”
“You’re good at drawing, Adam,” Taisy said, impressed despite this fact being somewhat besides the point. “You should have become an artist, not a scientist. Then you wouldn’t have to put up with assholes like Brad all the time.”
“I have a right to be a little annoyed, thank you very much, Taisy!”
“I love you really, Brad,” she said idly. “Anyway, can I got take a shower? I’m, like, covered in apple juice.”
Adam stared at her, speechless.
“I don’t want to know,” Cassidy sighed.