2.21 Malcolm's Aside Series -E-Year Ten

Malcolm welcomes the children back for the evening with a story he's been planning out in his head for days. He's missed them.

The story is about some kids who didn't want to do the laundry so they messed it up on purpose, then someone else was messing with the laundry, and everyone blamed the kids when it wasn't their fault anymore. That's why you should do your work carefully and not lie to people.

Olivia thinks this is stupid.

Malcolm knows that the line between stupid and useful can be rather thin, so he presses on with it.

“and all along... it was the dog that had been moving the shoes...”

“What kind of story is this?”

“Why did the dog move the shoes?”

“Hey, don't encourage him, this is not a good story.” Emir whispers. “Boo, dad, we want to hear about real ghosts, or at least the dog should be a ghost!”

Malcolm sighs and flicks the lights back on. “There are enough things in real life that are actually scary, aren't there?”

“You're not... going to only turn the light on only once, are you?” Jiraya gets up to flip the switch exactly three more times. Even numbers, today.

Emir ducks his head a bit. “Actually I really wanted to talk to you today, dad... can you play a game with me?”

Jiraya grabs a picture book about sports. The people in these books seem just as fake as the ones Malcolm just told them about. Who has the time to run through a field, kicking a ball at one another? What is even the point? They look mad when they're kicking at it, too.

Emir is very good at this game, he won't let his father win a single time. “What gives?”

Emir shrugs with a wide smile on his face. “I'm good at reading people.” He says proudly.

Jiraya is over it all. The plantman is outside right now. On the actual surface of the earth. Feeling the grassy meadows beneath his plant feet. It might be dirty, and that's why the people here say it's too gross to go up there unless you're a plant person too, but why can't he see it for himself, to make his own choice? But he knows why. Because he has to stay here and take lots of medicine and tests.

Malcolm says that grass is just like it looks in the book, that it can be soft, or even sharp if you feel it. Jiraya wants to look at it, to put his hands on it. But the plantman won't take him.

Malcolm grins. “How's that?”

“I let you get that one.” Emir says. He's being honest, he just wanted to see his dad smile at him. “I gave you a gift.”

Malcolm is a bit touched by this. “Okay maybe I'll give you a gift too. If we get out of here one day son, I'll buy you your own drum kit. But for now... I can let you let me win, say three more times?”
Emir straightens up, listening well now. “That's the thing with more than one drum on it, right? I will let you win every time.” He promises.

They spend the rest of the game trying to let each other win. Then the boy straightens up and asks a serious question. “Dad... what's it mean.. to buy?”

“W-ell, Buying is when you've worked to earn money, or someone has given you money, and you can use money to pay for things. Paying to buy it means, you get to take it home and keep it forever, or sell to someone else for money later, or use the thing, or even break it if you want to, because it's yours.”

“What's it mean if it's 'your's'? Like how I'm your son, did you buy me?” Malcolm tries not to laugh at this. “No kid, you were a gift, something your mom and I received when we got married. Or... because we got married, kind of? We are family, we can't be given away that easily.”

Jiraya's mood is not improved by their wholesome family bonding. So, he interrupts it.

“Malcolm... you're my family too right? I have... a family.”

Malcolm stops smiling, observing the look in his crystal clear eyes. “I'm sure you do.”

“...even though nobody else says I have a name, even.”He remarks bitterly.

“Well,who do you believe? Me, or everybody else?”

Jiraya thinks that over, so Malcolm continues. “Jiraya, I heard that name for you before, Ceres told me. She's not allowed to use your name in front of the...” (evil witch... thin cow...) Director. And you look almost exactly like my brother-in-law, when he was little. Your big sister is most definitely my wife.”

“Why isn't she coming to get us? Isn't she going to look for us, or anything? Are my mom and dad still alive? And wife means, you like, live together, but you don't. I don't think family is real.”

“You boys are both my family, okay?” He addresses them. “Even if nobody is coming to get us. Emir, you were going to read a bit right? Let me talk to your nephew.” He likes to emphasize the family's bond and their position within it as much as possible. So that they will take care of each other if he's ever not around. Or if anything else unthinkable happens.

So even though Jiraya asks these questions every few days, Malcolm goes back over it all again. Who he is (most likely), how strong his mom and dad are, what kind of people they are, and that they would never leave him here if they knew where he was. No matter what, the three of them have each other down here. And even Olivia, the little girl with the white hair and the warm but lifeless brown eyes, she can be seen as their sister while they are together, they can protect her when it's possible. Don't act out, but if there's ever a chance to get away, go to the people called the police or the firefighters, they can help. If the Director has an enemy or someone she doesn't like, that person might help them too. He tries not to overwhelm them, but to give them enough information that maybe they can act on it one day.

They hug it out. “I'm glad I met you, Malcolm. If I ever get to leave here, I'll tell my sister about you.”

“Thanks, Jiraya.”

“Maybe if I become a plant person too, they will let me go outside, and then I can run away and tell everyone about this place.”

“I hope you get out just so you are free, son.” Malcolm whispers.

Jiraya's silver eyes shine. “Thanks- you're like a real dad. At least, what I think a real dad is like.”

Jiraya is brave, just like Malcolm is, so he feels like eventually he will get out, and all of his dreams and playing are about flying in the sky and climbing mountains. He's seen a few pictures in books now, there's so much to see and do when you are free. He passes the time by making big plans to see the world. Assuming, it's real that is.

Having calmed down a somewhat nervous Jiraya, Malcolm sits near Emir. “How are you feeling, son?”

“Tired. Can you read a story?”

He can tell Emir is depressed, and chose the word tired instead, but he won't press the issue. This little man has the weight of the whole lab on his shoulders one might think, if they had seen the kind of tests he's been put through. The most recent one was rough, as they had been separated and Emir had been isolated in a quiet room alone for a few days. There are things he won't even share with his dad. Some days, they just sit together and he lets Malcolm hold him as if her were small again. Some days he comes back in tears, or angry, having barely held it in. Today... he's tired. When can he just be a child?

They head on over for bedtime.

Having been frustrated enough by pictures of people kicking black and white balls around in grassy fields he may never see in his whole life, Jiraya joins them.

Just in time for Emir to start whining. “I meant to me, read to me!!”

Malcolm smiles. “You asked me to read a story, and I'm reading it.”

“Da---d!”

“Alright alright. Climb up here.”

Emir's mood shifts quickly back into happy. His dad was great. He even warmed the spot up for him.

He reads to Jiraya first, but turns the book for both the boys, the Adventures of Raymundo. Who is kind of like Zorro, except he's also a creative cook and masks up for cooking competitions, which he always wins, of course. Jiraya thinks cooking sounds like a massive waste of time, so those parts of the story are a comedy to him.

Emir listens contentedly. If he were brave and capable like Raymundo, he would camp out under the stars every night and wake up the moment the sun was on his tent. He would sing loudly and have entire days where it was just him, outside by himself. Nobody would tell him what to do or know what his real name was, he would be safe under his mask. Away from people that... wanted anything.

By the time his dad gets around to him with a second book he's too tired to listen well.

So, success.

Afterwards, Malcolm dutifully puts himself to bed for the evening.

Days like these he doesn't feel like he's doing too badly.

In the morning, it's another feeling though. Hopelessness always creeps in, when his efforts don't seem like they are changing anything. Telling stories to the kids about the world outside, is that going to give them hope that strengthens them, or make them one day fall into a crushing despair?

Jiraya is pretty independent despite the many things he worries over, so Malcolm is somehow less worried about him. Emir, on the other hand, is easily moved to tears or celebration. Will the lab techs one day manipulate him to give up ever knowing a better place? “Jyo... what am I supposed to do with these kids?” He asks her under his breath, knowing full well she cannot answer him.

He begins to dream about her again that night. 

Only here in this nicer place has he been able to have some brighter dreams. He himself constantly teeters on that edge between grief over what is lost and hope for what might be one day. He's resolved a long time ago not to make this place more powerful that it is, to imprison his own mind or settle for a place like this. But a glimpse of his lovely wife, even just in a dream or two, well that's always a welcome distraction.

It's euphoric, when he gets to be outside again. He finds himself in strange places, far from Starlight Shores, far from the city she hates and plastic people that exhausted her, he finds her.

It feels like flying.

(It's not flying, it's a trampoline, but boy what a nice shot that makes.)

When he lands smoothly, she is waiting. Missed him a little bit, even. She complains about mundane things as if it's merely been days they've been apart. Asks him to fix things because her dad is too busy. And, did he get to take out the trash yet?

She just doesn't know he's been gone for so long.

“You... look different.”

“Good different, or bad different?”

“Well...”

He grins at her. She's so cute, trying not to let his feelings be hurt. “You can tell me.”

No, she can't.

Portrait of a blog right here.

In his dreams the sweet moments pierce him to his core,

...and are gone like the passing of a summer rain.

“You died, Malcolm, I buried you.”

“Stop haunting me!”

She yells until her dream changes.

“It's too late for this!”

He fades into waking, not disappointed so much as feeling crushed. It's a relief to know he'd seen an apparition, and not her, not really. It's also not as if he is free to go and find out what she would say.

“Don't you tell me that you're sorry anymore, I won't listen.” She says that a lot, it's his biggest fear.

“Please be safe...” He whispers to her when no one is around to hear him.

“...until I can find you again.”

“I have to go...”

But she leaves first.

“I know it's been too long. I didn't abandon you- my heart is with you, if you still... want that.”

”It's okay, I'm fine now. You can rest.”

Why does she look more lovely than he remembers, when she's tearing his heart out with her words?

Meanwhile, things are improving gradually for all the subjects...

Beaker finally stopped hesitating and went off to university, having a feeling that he could not explain, that he may never see this place the same way again. He said goodbye to his mother, but will be doing a lot of self reflection. Whether he learns anything of value remains to be seen.

...and far away from the nightmare that is the circle of his ex-wife's influence, Loki Beaker has built a little sanctuary of his own which houses his greatest achievement. Despite all his intentions to market the invention and sell it to investors and even the general public, he had finally decided that it could far too easily fall into the wrong hands. Thus, he hired out contractors to work in secrecy and darkness and gave them astonishing amounts of money to keep the place he would put it an absolute secret. Moira and Lyra, twin sisters and his real family as defined by vampiric high society (which commends new vampires to the care of their donors in a very loose familiar structure until said new beneficiary vampires are sufficiently awakened and in control of their own power. Those who create new vampires therefore, if it is known to the society as a whole, will be expected to provide means and education to check the new powers that have been created from being unleashed without preamble upon the mostly unsuspecting populaces across the known worlds) need not be in the know.

Freely, he has spent the last several decades perfecting it. There are now relays from the machine via several different forms of signals to receivers such as this one. Instead of dizzying trips which take hours to experience and days or months to live out outside of this direct era by adventuring into the time machine itself, Loki can now sit on the couch and project the images into this little wooden box. It displays on a tube which is filled with gas, which when electrified, backlights thousands of pixels in one of three colors and displays an image on the screen. An image of a possible future related to him. He could jump in and experience it for himself first hand whenever he may wish, of course. There are vibrations in the receiving materials that can highlight less likely events that may be captured and studied separately, and there are frequencies than can be added or removed to the main signal to show alternatives from a single point of time. He's been wondering if it can all be tuned to another person, but so far he has only ever experimented on himself, and he is the only one who has ever entered the machine. Every future in which he saw himself sharing the technology has gone awry, so for now he is fine-tuning it more and more to actual possible futures that he can shape.

He wishes he could visit the future with Casimir one day, but that won't be possible given the boy's mother and later on his eventual wife, as neither one can know so many secrets. Loki tries to be patient, but he wants a family that one day he will not have to hold anything back from. This may just not be the era for that.

He finally gets up to go, after sitting like a stone statue for an impossible amount of time. This one looks good so far, so it's the right moment to jump in and calibrate the future from inside the timeline itself. To take it for a test run. He has to get this one right, so he's back in time to scoop up Jiraya before the techs can recover him. That boy can cause a lot of trouble if the timing is not right, and if Dustin knew it wasn't prevented and could be, he would have Loki's head, or have Meghan have it. He wants them to leave this plane on good terms with him, after all. Loki tries not to smile at the memory from the other day and fails. But she was not his to keep, no matter how many more things he would like her to throw at him.

For now, everything is in place, so it's time to get to work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are two kinds of people in this world. People who care about the dog moving the shoes, and people who find the whole story to be dumb. I am the former, if it matters.

If Malcolm were to visit, actually. This is how it'd go. Thanks for clearing the air, Caz.

Caz: “You're not my real dad!”

Yeah no kidding, but everyone here kinda knows your real dad, does that count for anything?

Random picture of Beaker looking really guilty for no reason at all. He was a klepto, but I aged him up to love the night as it seemed more fitting. So, he has a sordid past, :D