Relative Time

[trustycrowbar]

[Video, public.]

[Gordon looks like hell. Drawn and sleepless, A large bruise on his forehead across the browbone, several scrapes, cuts and bruises on his face and neck, glasses scratched... He stares into the camera awkwardly, with bustle in the Labs behind him.]

No doubt you've seen the large anomalous mass in the middle of the city. I believe we know exactly what it is now.

It's a creature by the name of Zagreus. It's a conscious collective of timelines that had been unnaturally stopped from manifesting the way they should. The resultant energy has gained a name and a mind... of a fashion, but not a form. Yet. It's not alive in the conventional sense, but it does have a goal: to eradicate every timeline it comes into contact with, including ours. It had been dormant in the Doctor's subconscious until now; god only knows how it got out, but now it's free, and gestating inside that temporal knot in the center of town. Feeding off all the chaos of the age-scrambling while the Timeknot dilation field ages and turns to ash anything that gets immersed in it.

We've got to get in there and destroy Zagreus before it reaches full maturity. Thanks to the Doctor's schematics we at the Labs have created a handful of personal temporal stability devices that will enable us to get into the Tineknot unharmed. What we need now, are people who are willing to use them. We should have enough devices for anyone who wants to go in, anyone who wants to fight, but let me know here so that I can be sure of it.

Tomorrow morning we'll meet there. I plan on going in as well. It wouldn't be the first time I did something like this... But I get the feeling that even in its larval stage, Zagreus is going to take all our firepower to take down.

[Video, private to Morrigan]

[He knows she heard him, that he intends to throw himself into that portal to god-knows-where. He hadn't mentioned anything of the sort to her. Therefore:]

I think I owe you an explanation.

((EDIT: Log post is HERE! CHARGE!))

Comments

[vaudevil]

[Cue in one very confused young scientist.]

Hold on, you mean to tell me that this thing is out to destroy timelines? That's not possible. Time isn't energy and it's not a mass so how can it destroy something that has no form? Time is a concept, a measurement of continuity. It has no physical form.

[Yeah, Lee's just a little weirded out.]

[trustycrowbar]

[Gordon actually spent a while trying to phrase this in as non-crazy terms as possible. Naturally it didn't work, and normally Gordon would relish at the chance to spur a discussion on the topic, but he is very Not In the Mood right now.]

I'll level with you Lee, it's worse than that. Time is a measure of increasing entropy. I think it thrives on entropic gradient discharge and seeks to absorb it once it's powerful enough to.

So it doesn't just want to destroy our timeline. It's out to consume it.

[vaudevil]

[There's a moment of shock on his face. In that instant, he couldn't determine if he wants to laugh or if he should take it seriously. He'll decide on the later, it seems safer.]

O~kay. Whatever that thing is, it's going to be disappointed and demand a refund on the check.

[Yes, he's actually thinking about this seriously even if it doesn't seem like he is.]

This is certainly a nice little conundrum. Is there a plan?

[trustycrowbar]

[A quiet, dark-sounding laugh.] Yeah. Get in there and kill it before it has a chance to kill us.

[A beat.] I really wish I were kidding.

[vaudevil]

[He's not going to pretend this all doesn't sound weird.]

Back up and rewind for a second. Kill it? With what? A stopwatch?

[trustycrowbar]

If I'm right, Zagreus won't be without form for long. The energy he's absorbing from the entropic gradient will reach a point where he needs an anchoring physical form to keep going.

It's probably already half-formed in there, and that's what we're going to attack.

[vaudevil]

So, who's going to play the lancer? Do you even have a plan? How long do we have before he reaches critical?

If you guys, which I'm assuming there's more than one in this mess, need a runner, I can do it. It's not like I got much to live for.

[trustycrowbar]

I'm in the process of working that out. It also depends on what the landscape is inside that Timeknot, and we won't know that until we find out. Judging by the rate of tension building I say we've got a few days before it goes.

[The morbid subtext goes unadressed, but only because he doesn't knwo what to say to it.] There are already some volunteers, and we need all of them we can find.

[vaudevil]

[To Lee, it wasn't morbid, it's a sad truth. He doesn't feel like he's got a purpose anymore. In this timeline, he's in exile. He already betrayed his family and for that, his life is forfeit.]

Well, if you need me, you know where I am.

[trustycrowbar]

We're meeting tomorrow morning, outside the timeknot. Come prepared to fight and ready for anything.

[vaudevil]

Whoa, that's it? Just tomorrow morning, meeting, prepare to die? What about in between? You don't have a plan much less what that thing really is and if it can be defeated at all. Yeah, sure, it's taking a physical form so we're just going to improvise?

[He sighs and rolls his eyes with his arms up in a shrug that fall in a slap to his sides.]

I guess if I'm going to die, I'll die on my feet as an example of what not to do.