Getting up to date... and asking for a date!

OOC - For some *unfathomable* reason, Yahoo seems to have really
delayed (or ditched) several of my webposts (messages not sent a
mailer pgm) to my RPG groups on Saturday and Sunday. And then flaking
out on monday and claiming I wasn't subscribed to any groups at all.
(Which seems to be nearly a common occurance sometimes, lately) So
I'm recreating some of them from memory reposting them. Now that I'm
doing this I suspect they probably will suddenly get posted making
me look like total idiot, (as if I needed help in that area...), so I
apologise in advance if you see any dupes!
- Tim/WW
IC/RPG -
----------------------------------------------
Captain Seymour Niples + Commander White Wolf
Captain's office
Blue Dwarf
------- Snip -------
Niples' brow furrowed again. "So tell me about all this time
travelling business again. Why was there two escape pods when we only
found one Chen? And this Chen obviously wasn't a few hundred years
old, neither is the Red Dwarf."
White Wolf rolled his bulging hamster eyes. He knew that time
travelling was going to be hard to explain.
---- End Snip -----
The Huge Hamster nearly choked on his drink, and then quickly
composed himself, and replied "Well, that's a really convoluted story
sir", he paused trying to gather ideas of what to say, "Umm, I wonder
where should I start..."
"How's about at the begining?", supplied Niples.
"That's one of the key problems with this whole time travel thing,
it's awfully difficult to explain things in laymans terms where this
whole mess started without bringing up a bunch of long dead, nearly
unpronouceably named mathematicians theories on temporal mechanics of
the paradoxs that come into play when an Atemporal such as myself
gets involved. It pretty much becomes a temporal soup with too many
cooks, adding their own spices as they pass by along the way."
"Your an 'atemporal'? What does that mean?", asked Seymour sounding a
bit confused.
"Well, literally translated it means 'without time'."
"You mean, sorta like 'Asexual reproduction' means 'without sex',
right?", replied Niples thinking he might be catching on to the
meaning.
"Exactly. Due to my curse of being melded with a hamster while on the
event horizon of a black hole, I don't experience the passage of time
in the same mode as non-atemporals do. It's kinda like non-atemporals
are on a train going forward in time, and I sorta have access to a
hover flitter that can freely move back and forth on that train, and
have the ability to go to and fro among other places that trains
don't normally go. And for that matter, even switch trains
completely, with all the attendant problems such a thing creates."
"So you can flit forward and tell what's going to happen to us next,
right?"
"Unfortunately, that's where my example breaks down a little bit,
Captain. Because that assumes that time is a static thing, and it is
not - it's somewhat fluid at all points kinda like a train riding on
a flexible cable. It's somewhat subject to course changes at all
times. So, for really short hops back and forth, yes, I could tell
what's going to happen next on a small scale. But that would force me
to be making lots of short hops back and forth, to know exactly
what's going on at all times. On the other hand, if I wanted to to
get a birds eye view of what's going on, I can't use the short jumps
back and forth anymore. I'd need to fly high up, above the cable
riding train to see what's going on. And thus, I'd be able to see
what's going to happen for a good distance ahead in time, but I would
be so disconnected from the experience I could no longer depend on
any specifics of what going on inside the individual train cars, so
to speak, that I could only depend on the generalities of what I saw
while traveling above the whole train. Sure, I would be able to look
far enough ahead to see whether this cable riding train *might*
arrive at specific destination, but I wouldn't be certain of what
happened aboard any of the train cars, or who's in which train car,
unless I came down and reboarded the again... Plus, If I *did* happen
to see something that might spell disaster for this cable riding
train, I'd still have the problems of reboarding it and convincing
people into doing something to prevent it while not knowing with too
much certainty what exactly needs to be done to prevent it at all,
*even if* I took it upon myself to make those corrections without
anyone else's help."
"I see, go on." prompts Niples nodding, and hoping that there isn't
going to be a quiz on this afterwards, because he was having a little
difficultly understanding it all, but rather that looking foolish by
asking a lot more questions, opted to look as he understood
everything.
"Well, time doesn't really have an end, or a begining as you might
think, it has a infinite fluidity that can also allow some events to
start in the future, and end in the past and vice verse. Hence,
sometime in the our future, Phil will be experimenting with cloning
my DNA, and somehow inadvertantly provide the genesis for my arch
Nemesis, Darken to appear. Who after I blind him in the left eye
during his rampage through the Blue Dwarf, will go back in time, kill
several of my friends at Alpha Beta Far, and steal my plans for the D-
gun, to later use a botched replica made from those incorrect plans
to eradicate some of his enemies in the time stream. Which forces me
into finding a hiding the fully functional D-gun, to keep it out his
hands, and prompts Zorn at the STCP into programming Cubie to hijack
me forward in time to the STCP headquarters so he can discus plans
with me on how to better protect the D-gun. And while Cubie's
temporal hijacking brings Darken to the STCP, an even more future
STCP intervenes and brings Major Harris into help deal with Darken,
that doesn't stop an associate of Zorn's from interfering while Zorn
is attempting to undo some unforseen problem with the time continium,
which is apparently fixed, but unfortunately is unable to stop Darken
from escaping. Thus Zorn gave me his temporal divertor, and told me I
had to get off of what looked like the Blue Dwarf immediately, but
hindsight obivously wasn't since when I got into the escape pod,
Zorns temporal divertor set me and the second Red Dwarf pod back 600
years into the past. And I later had to affect my own rescue from the
planet below..."
As the huge hamster trailed off, Niples nodded while unlacing his
fingers, and glancing at his watch while commenting, "It sounds like
you had quite a few adventures. Hmm, perhaps I'll have to ask you
some more questions concerning them later, as I see we're almost out
of time. And I do have other appointments I need to attend to today."
"Oh? Well then, Perhaps I should get going Captain. Thank you, for
the wonderful drinks, and I guess I'll be seeing you in the drive
sometime room later." Replied the huge hamster as he headed for the
door.
"Yes, I will. See you later, Mister White Wolf." called Niples while
waving goodbye as the large hamster left.
<Later in the drive room>
------- Snip -------
Captain Niples, back fresh from training, entered the room, White
Wolf right behind him. Allie stood and saluted him. "Captain Niples,
sir. It's damn good to have you back."
"Nice to be back," he replied. He fidgeted. "I, uh, heard you've
been busy."
The hologram smiled. "I guess you heard. There was an incident
involving me, but it has passed, thanks in part to Phil FeBuggure.
You need not worry, sir. I'm a new hologram."
"That's good to hear." He continued into his office.
Allie wiggled her fingers at White Wolf as he followed the
Captain. "Hi, White Wolf. Have a great day."
---- End Snip -----
The huge hamster waved back while picking up the dialy first officers
reports and replying happily, "Why thank you, Allie. It's good to see
that Phil carried out my orders to make those repairs on your damaged
light bee. At least *somebody* listens to my orders once in a while,
it looks like the security still hasn't captured that runaway
elephant."
Allie replied with a touch of surprise, "You ordered Phil to repair
my light bee? Funny, He never mentioned it to me at all..."
The overgrown hamster puzzled over that for a second, thinking "Now,
I wonder why he didn't...", and then immediately said to
Allie, "Well, that doesn't really matter, Allie. What matters to me
is that your alright now, and we have the drive room's prettiest red
head back 'in the pink'. How's about I take you out to dinner,
celebrating that your return to good health at 7 pm after I get off
shift, Hmm?"
<So what's your answer, Allie?>