cfbhawkeye | Time Capsule

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Time Capsule

Doctor Stephen Strange is a handy fella. Between the whole time space and general dimensional weirdness and mutations out there its nice to be on the good side of someone that can actually choose and control where they'd like to go.

Strange is starting to become Clint's go-to guy for general weirdness he can't figure out on his own. It's costing him a fortune in fancy teas and Red Sox tickets but its worth it when it results in things working out. And Clint would rather prod him than Loki for these kind of power trips.

And Strange seems rather thrilled by the idea of a two hundred year jump in addition to a colossal fling through space to pop aboard the USS Enterprise with his general suck the ozone of the immediate area and minor implosion.

It was worse than Mjolnir...

Clint was pretty glad he didn't eat much and there for didn't puke too much all over the shiny metal floor of the Federation Flagship.

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Jim sticks his hand right through where the wall should be. "It's gone. You're free," he says with a laugh. "That's new. Self-inflicted jail."

He sobers up quickly enough at the promise that the trip isn't going to be fun. "Never is."

"Yeah yeah yeah. You never know. With lazers and what the hell ever. Also, speaking from experience, big glass cells and bad guys not good bed fellows."

Clint moved next to Jim and laid a hand on his shoulder. He checked his watch. It wad a few minutes before the jump kicked in.

Clint was silent for a moment then... "How's the family?"

Jim looks over at him, eyebrows raised. "If it's okay with you, I think I'd rather make the jump instead of talking about the weather."

Okay, awkward, Clint. Jim doesn't get why they're not just... going. It seems really weird to put your hand on a guy's shoulder and leave it there while talking when you're not, you know, brothers or something.

Clint's lips thinned into a line and he gave a jerk of his shoulder. "Fair enough. Thing's on a timer or something, just trying to-"

The minute turned over and the pocket of oxygen and ozone sucked open around them. In a matter of seconds they were hurled through time and space to the past and the clinic office of Doctor Steven Strange on the edge of Alphabet City in New York.

Clint collapsed, dry heaving and cussing up a storm.

Never again... never...

Strange looked more than pleased and chuckled quietly at Clint's state before offering a hand to Jim.

Oh, God, that is unpleasant. Jim manages to stay on his feet, if only because he's had so very much worse, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel like tossing his cookies. So, he takes Strange's hand and gives it a shake before letting go and standing a little taller. "You must be Stephen Strange. Clint told me a little about you. Seems you've got some unique talents."

Strange beamed and moved to where Clint was sitting up on the floor getting his composure. He gave the archer's head an affection pat, like one would a pet that had done a particularly pleasing trick.

Clint swatted the hand and snarled a curse at the sorcerer then focused on trying to haul himself to his feet.

Strange chuckled again and gave Jim a little run down of his natural... and frankly, frighteningly powerful, abilities as the Sorcerer Supreme. Everything from stopping and bending time, to resurrecting the dead, to creating and collapsing black holes and universes. He promised Kirk a safe return to his time when all was said and done. Not even missed from his ship.

Clint finally managed to get to his feet and was breathing slowly and steadily, his stomach settling. "Thanks again for all this Doc. Got you third base line seats to the Sox-Yanks. Chow included."

"Huh. Handy guy," is all Jim says in response to the lengthy list of abilities. He's kind of learned to take things like this in stride. If he were afraid of every person or creature that could bend time or make things happen with its mind, he might as well just never leave his quarters. Humans are pretty much at the bottom of the evolutionary spectrum, as far as abilities go.

He accepts that as it is, and is that much more proud when humans come out on top.

"You okay there, Clint?" Jim asks, looking over at the tiny man. "Gotta get your land legs again, huh?"

He's not tiny, he's space efficient.

"I'm fine. Its my inner ear. When it went it took my natural equilibrium, too. Not just my hearing. Had to train myself to walk straight on normal terra firma, space and time travel screw it over until my brain figures it out again."

Clint rubbed at his ears, popping out one hearing aid to really dig into it before replacing the device. He gave Strange a wave, leading Kirk out the door, through the small clinic and onto the streets. A non-descript black SUV sat on the curb. Two more parked across the street. Clearly a tail and scatter precation.

"What do you want to eat? We gotta order up now so its delivered before they lock us in."

Edited 2014-01-22 12:58 (UTC)

Jim follows without much protest until he sees what's waiting for them. This seems somewhat more than casual, and that's confirmed by Clint's next statement. "'Lock us in'?" Jim echoes, staring at the archer.

"Why the hell are we being locked in?" He really doesn't like the idea of being put in a cage. Hell, coming here is one cage already. A cage in a cage wouldn't be the smartest thing ever.

Clint gave him a look and paused to speak quietly to him. "Jim, its a warehouse full of ridiculously dangerous, futuristic xenological technology. Having living security is to dangerous and full of flaws. We go in, the doors seal for fifteen to eighteen hours. The code for the locks change every thirteen minutes. When the doors open again we walk out and you go home, finished or not."

Clint gives him a reassuring smile and a light pat on the shoulder as he heads back for the SUV again. "C'mon, it'll be fun. Pick our own music, all the chow we want, handy bathroom and a couple couches for a break or nap. It'll be like a cram for a test, cept no test at the end."

Fifteen to eighteen hours. Locked in. Great. Yeah, that sounds fun. Thanks for the good time, Clint.

Oh well.

"You owe me lots and lots of pizza for this. And there'd better be some cinnamon buns in there, too," Jim grumbles as he gets into the SUV. "And root beer. Not the shitty stuff, either. Also, you realize you haven't exactly told me what we're doing with the tech, right?"

Clint was already sending a text to their liaison with Jim's demands. Emphasis on the 'good root beer' bit. He turned over the engine and pulled onto the street. The other two SUVs pulling into convoy with them.

"Its actually alot easier than it sounds. Way they explained it to me, and they talk to me like I'm four so it works, there's designations Red, Yellow, and Green. Green is the stuff we can play with and develop now. Yellow's the stuff that needs to go into lock down until we're able to handle it. And Red is the stuff that is going straight to the Slingshot and destroyed. All you have to do is look over the stuff and give us your best guess about what to designate each artifact we got and at the same time give a written guideline to follow for anything new we come across in the future... so... essentially we're asking you to help us figure out the pace of xeno-human tech development that's sane and won't get the whole future as you know it shot to hell."

"Huh. Well, I guess that makes sense. Better than you all just doing whatever you want with it and blowing yourselves to pieces." He shrugs a little and looks out the window, checking out their surroundings. It's been a while since he's seen early 21st century buildings. Been a while since he's seen Earth, actually.

"I'll help out with whatever I can. Still a lot of civilizations and technologies we haven't discovered yet, though, so no promises."

"About this point we're glad to take anything we can get guideline wise. We're not asking for a miracle or anything. You got better hindsight than us, that's all. We really do appreciate it... I do especially. We do a good job of this and they might actually start thinking I know what I'm doing."

Clint chuckled and wove the suv through the city down into the Brooklyn warehouse district. He pulled up to a smoke and oil stained warehouse. A set of garage doors slid open and Clint drove right in. The two escorts breaking off and the door closing behind the suv. Clint cut the engine and climbed out from behind the wheel. He grabbed a purple backpack from the back seat and started for a set of doors at the far end of the room. The SHIELD logo stenciled on the metal.

"This feels very... Section 31, for some reason," Jim murmurs as he follows Clint out of the SUV and to the door. Why did they need two escort vehicles? Is there really that much danger of getting attacked? Clint doesn't really seem like the paranoid type.

Jim's kinda glad he stuck to the UK.

"They're gonna bring my cinnamon buns and root beer before we get all locked in, right?" he asks as he peers skeptically at the door.

"Its probably all already down there. SHIELD's a bully when it comes to cutting in line in tight situations...well... a bully in general really... But we're big tippers. The hell's Section 31?"

Clint barely seems to take note of the high security. He's so used to it that he's, ironically, blind to it. He operates as if its not there, and ninety percent of the time when things go to hell, its not there and he's on the front lines.

More than anything its all protocol, especially with a secondary involved that isn't an agent or specialist like Kirk. The chance of attack or infiltration is low, the bunker they're headed to reinforced and secure enough that buster bombs would have a hard time with breaking it open. But the possibility of sabotage and espionage? That's the real risk. Spies are a distrustful and dangerous lot, even among their own alliances.

Clint types a code into a keypad and presses a thumb into a tiny screen before the set of doors slide back, opening up to an elevator. Down a few flights and opening into an operations room packed with computers, screens and schematics. A couple of techs and an agent greet them casually and a cleared space of a desk is laden down with pizza and bakery boxes and a large picnic cooler packed with ice and bottles of rootbeer.

The techs give Clint a laptop and then give each of them a pair of spec glasses, complete with built in video and audio recorders. Clint grabs the stacked pizza boxes and the two techs haul up the cooler with a handle each. "Ready for your first and hopefully only SHIELD mission ever?"

If Jim weren't from the future, all this technology might be impressive. As it is, it's all old-school to him and although it's highly advanced for this particular era, it's sort of on part with being guarded by large dogs and spiked wooden fences.

Well, whatever. Better this than no security at all, especially where alien tech is involved.

"Don't worry about that," Jim says in response to Clint's question about Section 31. It wasn't meant for the man to understand, and Section 31 won't be around for a long time yet.

He lifts his hand in greeting at the other people, but he's definitely more excited about the food. Replicated versions just don't hold up to scrutiny. "You weren't kidding about them cutting in line."

Jim ogles the pizza for a bit before he looks at the glasses being handed to him, putting them on curiously. Huh. Standard fare. Alright. "Ready? This isn't going to be any harder than anything else I've already done, even in this century."

"Lets hope not." Clint hummed a bit.

They had a few minutes before the doors unlocked. The agent in charge of the facility gave a mandatory spiel about the security of the warehouse and keeping it all hush hush.

Midway through her speech the time clicked over, the system gave a humming alert and the doors unsealed and hissed open. Clint gave the other agent an apologetic smile and ducked passed her into a massive, underground room as it was flooded with lights. It looked something like a cross between a bunker and a weapons test lab. There were low steel tables spaced evenly though the room heavily laden with artifacts, each with a little number card next to it, there had to be a hundred pieces or more. The largest confiscated items sat on an open space of floor to the far rear of the room. The corner nearest the door was occupied by a desk, a couple of couches, low coffee table and a mini-fridge. A door presumably led to a small bathroom.

Clint headed for the desk and set down the boxes of food. The techs hauled the cooler onto the coffee table before heading towards the door to exit with the agent.

Clint sighed and looked towards Kirk as the doors slid closed again. "Eat first or get started?"

Jim takes a look around, cataloging the various locations of things in his head. Alright, at least it's all relatively well laid out and it's not all in a heap. That's good news.

"Gonna do both." Jim's first stop is the bathroom, though, and he relieves himself and washes his hands before he comes out and grabs a paper plate, stacking it high with pizza before he starts heading down the rows of tables. Jim's going to take a quick look through their entire inventory before he starts on anything. "So, data entry. You guys want it all on paper, or can I make voice recordings, or type it up on a computer, or what?"

Clint has dug into the cooler, pulling out a rootbeer... in a glass bottle, fancy stuff... and cracked the cap off with his ring. He takes a long swig of the liquid before speaking. He points to the glasses that they had given Jim, then his own sitting on his crown.

"It's all built in video and audio. Just look and talk, it'll record everything POV and transcribe into the hard drive of the laptop. The squints can deal with all the mucking around in the data after we're done. All you have to do is press the button on the side of the frames to stop and start."

Its about then that the ten minute window for the unlocked doors ends, a small alarm sounds again and the hiss of the doors sealing before silence. Fifteen plus hours and counting.

Clint flipped open the laptop, booted up the system for direct data transcription. Then he digs around for the Pandora system. "You like Big Band or old school Rock?"

At least just being able to do a show-and-tell-style analysis will speed things up considerably. Hell, he may actually be able to get through the majority of this in the allotted time. Good. That ought to make sure nobody gets warp drive before their time.

"Right. Button is start-slash-stop. Got it." He peruses through a few more items before the buzzer sounds and Jim looks over at the doors, watching them lock themselves up. Better settle in.

He tips his head to the side, squinting a little at Clint. "What the hell is Big Band?"

Clint gave Jim a look like he'd committed a real atrocity. Then he shook his head as he cued up the channel. "You just made me sad for the future."

The laptop hummed and the bass tones of the Glen Miller Orchestra poured out at a low volume to fill up the empty space.

Clint hummed in satisfaction before grabbing a slice of pizza then dug around in the desk before coming up with three packs of large round stickers in red, yellow and green. He stuffed them into his BDU's pocket and leaned against the desk, watching Jim get comfortable and acclimated.

"After we're all done here you're invited to go along to the Slingshot. Red marked stuff will get hauled out immediately. It's fun, we barbeque and Sitwell usually brings some of his basement microbrew stuff. It ain't so bad for alcohol."

Tucking them each into the pockets of his BDUs he ambled in

"It'll probably break your heart, then, that McDonald's doesn't stick around forever, either," Jim replies, not at all concerned about Clint's music selection. Jim will probably end up tuning it out in favor of concentrating on his work, anyway.

He starts on his second slice of pizza as he finishes making his tour through the warehouse, and then he heads back to the tables nearest their rest spot. "No offense, man, but after sixteen hours of this, I'll probably just want to get back home. I'm sure your friend makes great beer, but if I've learned anything about dimension-and-time travel, it's that you shouldn't screw around with whatever opportunities you've got to get back."

"Don't care as long as it lasts until I'm dead. Which shouldn't be all that much longer statistically speaking. And no problem, just making the offer."

Clint dusted his hands before flipping open one of the bakery boxes. The scent of warm glaze and cinnamon washed over his face and Clint hummed pleasantly. He picked on out, using a piece of wax paper to hold it and nipped a bite out.

He turned towards Jim and jerked his head. "Where do you wanna start?"

This is why Jim made the first tour through: "I'm going to start with all the ones that I already know, and work my way to the more difficult ones."

So, Jim heads on down to where he knows he saw a universal translator. Swallowing his slice of pizza, he wipes his fingers off on the napkin, pushes the button on the side of the glasses and picks the device up.

He'll keep the recordings short and to-the-point -- what it is, how it works, where it (probably) comes from, how dangerous it is, and how long it should be before humans get or encounter this kind of tech on their own.

Then he'll go back to eating his pizza until he finds the next thing he knows.

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