Blasted Futures, Secret Histories (SciFi Smackdown)

Round Six - The Time In Between

30 MINUTES AGO

"No one here believes in green deeply enough. In greens so blue, so malachite..."

"Shut up, I'm trying to concentrate."

"You used to love it when I'd quote poetry."

"That was before I discovered you only memorized Les Murray's whole canon to get me in bed. Now shut it, I have to finish these calculations."

"Come on... the program won't finish compiling for another half an hour. We have a little time..."

"Quit it! If we get an alignment and miss it..."

"Jessa, the odds that we will get an alignment are so infinitesimally small, I can't believe we even got funding to look for it. Just come over here and-"

"Michael! God! Grow up! I'll be, like, five more minutes. Look, the data are already looking good. The odds might be small, but these are the best odds we've ever had. I'm sorry if I'm a little more excited about the outcome of an experiment I've spent the last eighteen months of my life preparing for than whatever you have in your pants. Okay, look. Are you pouting? Michael J. Soames, you come here and look at this data right now. Jesus."

"Whatev- wait, is that...?"

"That's what I need you to look at! We have at least one ionic alignment! Michael! This is it!"

"Wait - what about over-"

"Holy shit, I see it, it's-"

"Two? Maybe more... Jesus, Jessa, you need to buy a lottery ticket."

"I... guess. Michael, this isn't possible."

"Sure it is. It's just not very probable. Can you imagine if we got an alignment of all seven ions? I'm pretty sure the theory is that would stabilize time travel. Or something."

"Hnnft. Now time travel - that really is impossible."

"Miss Smarty-Pants. Nothing is impossible."

"Except time travel. Because if it was possible, we would know. It would be everywhere. It would be retroactively completely pervasive. We know there will never be time travel - because there hasn't been any time travel."

"What if governments just kept it under wraps? What if shadowy organizations just -"

"Michael, given an infinitely long timescape - which we have to assume is available - every plan will go awry. Nobody could ever keep something secret literally forever. All it takes is for the secret to get out once in all of history - oh my God, that's the third alignment, for sure - then everyone has it. We're still back to: it must be impossible, because if it were possible, we'd know by now."

"Four. Look."

"Five. Six. I've never seen the data so organized. Michael..."

"Oh shit. What the hell are we going to do no-"

NOW

"I think I just saw another portal open over by the Marx Centre. Like a dozen guys at least."

"Michael, get away from the window. You need to quit obsessing about factionaries! Let them fight their stupid war. We will be fine."

"You don't know that. They're looking for us. They have to be."

"No, they're looking to pitch another pole for the tent of their pan-temporal ideological sphere. Did they look like EcoCommies or Lockdowns?"

"Epicureans, I think."