ten_fwd | Deck Eleven: Holodeck Two (Volga River, circa 1930s)

This is not the smartest idea she's ever had. The library is open; she could be reading, reading just about anything she'd like. She could be in the gym working the edge off her tension. Hell, she could turn this holodeck into a gym that she's familiar with. Test out her ability to actually handle the fake reality with something safe and mundane.

That would be sensible.

Instead, Natasha is sitting on a low pier on the west bank of the Volga River, her slacks rolled up to her knees as she dangles her toes in the water and very carefully monitors her unease.

It's late spring, a vague point in the 1930s. The only people are those working on the occasional cargo ship as they travel up and down the broad expanse of the river, but there are plenty of birds. Location, just south enough from Volgograd that she can't see it.

This might not be the smartest idea she's ever had, but she knows better than to actually go to her hometown. And at least she's got a copy of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories to keep her company.

[OOC: As per normal Trek holodeck set-ups, anyone can walk in as long as they don't mind entering in mid-program.

Open until I say otherwise! :-) ]

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"All thanks to a nice bit of time-travel and reality-hopping..." She tilts her head a little, studying the boy.

"Which century are you from?"

"The twenty-first." He tilts his head right back and taps his chin. "From your style of dress, I presume you must be from the twentieth or twenty-first century. Correct?"

"Correct. Early twenty-first."

A good thing she left her Widow Bites off before coming in, then; they do stand out as being unusual.

"Do they have time-travel in your twenty-first?"

As he plucks some grass from the ground to examine it, he shakes his head. "Time travel exists only in a hypothetical framework. Experimental evidence has confirmed the validity of forward time travel via time dilation, but nothing on this scale."

"Similar over in my...world."

As far as she knows, anyway.

"We've got aliens, though."

This is the second time he's heard of aliens coming to Earth, and it's more surprising this time because he's actually sat down (well, stood up) and checked the database in his head to see whether that's ever happened before. Not on his Earth, in any case. The Gaia Library gets a bit fuzzy where Decade, and hence other Riders, are involved.

"From the moon?" he inquires.

Now that's an interesting question.

"No, from...nowhere near Earth. They've all had to use portals to reach us."

So not the same aliens Billy had mentioned. Of course it would be silly to presume that only one other world in the universe housed alien life.

"What are their intentions?"

"One lot tried to conquer Earth, the other tried to destroy the known universe."

Good times.

"Does your reality have...aliens or other powered beings?"

"How unfortunate."

He drops the grass from his hands and nods. "They are terrestrial in origin, but there are humans with extraordinary powers known as Dopants. Thankfully, their numbers have grown fewer in the past year or so thanks to certain efforts."

"Now that sounds ominous," she says, voice dry and light.

"How so?" he asks, head tilted to the side.

"'Certain efforts'?" Natasha quotes. "Kinda euphemistic, isn't it?"

Well, when she puts it that way. "The efforts of the Kamen Riders to prevent the Dopants from causing massive amounts of destruction, then," he clarifies. "The Dopants are not killed if it can be helped. Rather, the source of their superhuman power is destroyed so they can return to a life free of its influence."

...Huh.

"So these Kamen Riders are...a unit? Or more like superheroes?"

"Closer to the latter." Although he'd never considered them superheroes before. What an interesting way of looking at it. He rubs his chin as he continues. "There are two of them, going by the names of Double and Accel. They have protected my hometown for nearly two years, now."

"Well your world sounds a hell of a lot different to mine."

She puts her book down on the pier and tilts her head back, looking at the clouds.

"Anyone else from your world here? There's a few from mine."

There she goes again saying "world" like that. But between her and Billy talking about alien invaders that he can find no record of, Philip has to agree with that supposition. They aren't only from different places and points in time, but different versions of Earth entirely.

"My partner, Shotaro, is here," he replies. "Aside from that, no one I know."

"Hm."

That cloud is an improbable elephant. That one a...canoe?

Interesting.

"I've been trying to work out if there's any...pattern to the people brought here. Like from type of world, or profession, or how many clusters there are."

"I have also been attempting to figure that out." He picks at the grass again, just to give his hands something to do. "There is a statistical cluster of those originating from the twentieth and early twenty-first century, and many seem to be American. However, there are enough outliers in both categories to indicate that those cannot be the criteria by which people have been chosen."

"I ran into the same conclusion," she admits, ruefully. "Any theories?"

"I recently had the... pleasure of encountering the being responsible for this. He was not forthcoming with information, but certain things he said indicated that he possessed an unfathomable amount of power." Philip twists a blade of grass between his hands as he continues, "Understanding this may be beyond even my conceptual ability."

"Maybe. Or maybe not. Power and motivation aren't exactly the same thing," she points out.

"Did he strike you as the kind of person who did things on whims?"

With a sideways tilt of his head, he thinks back to the conversation. "He did seem fairly cavalier when we spoke, yes." But bringing all of these people here on just a whim? Philip hadn't even considered the possibility.

"Fantastic," Natasha says, dry as dry. Trickster, then. Maybe.

Because all turned out so well with Loki Odinsson.

"But...good to know."

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