Time Is Not A Line But A Dimension
Feb. 13th, 2009 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tellshannon815Title: Time Is Not A Line But A Dimension
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Daniel, Theresa, Abigail, Widmore. Mentions of Desmond, Charlotte and Matthew Abaddon.
Warnings: Spoilers for Jughead. This Place Is Death disregarded as writing of this begun before that episode aired.
Summary: Daniel remembers the events that led up to his departure from Oxford.
You're the only person who can help us. I need you to go back to Oxford University. Go back to where we met.
If the situation hadn't been so serious, Daniel would almost have laughed at this. The irony wasn't lost on him, that he needed Desmond Hume to do something to stop everyone's consciousness from becoming permanently unstuck in time. Because it was only thanks to Desmond that Daniel even knew it was possible in the first place, and thanks to Desmond that he hadn't abandoned his research at all.
When Desmond had turned up at Queen's College that day, Daniel hadn't believed him. Although he hadn't openly admitted to anyone at the college at the time that he was performing experiments into time travel, some of them knew at least that he was interested in the theory. They'd mock him to his face, address him by the name of that guy from Back to the Future.
So when Desmond turned up, claiming to have met Daniel in the future, Daniel had leapt to the conclusion that this was some feeble joke on the part of one of them.
It was only when Desmond had revealed that he knew about Eloise the rat, as well as telling Daniel to set his device to 2.342 and oscillating at 11 Hertz, that Daniel realised it couldn't be them. None of them knew about the rat, or understood the significance of the name Eloise.
And it was only when Daniel repeated his experiment using the numbers Desmond had given him, and Eloise had successfully navigated a maze he was not due to teach her for another hour, that he finally knew his research was working after all.
The jumps between the present and the future, she couldn't tell which was which. She had no anchor.
After Eloise died, Daniel repeated his experiment with a few other rats, just to be sure. And every time he set the device to the numbers Desmond had given him, the consciousness of the rat was sent to a different period in time.
But every time he tried it, the rat died, and Daniel knew why. The answer had been clear ever since his conversation with Desmond.
The brains of the rats were always short circuiting, because they had no anchor in both time periods. But Daniel also knew that the rats wouldn't have been able to form such an attachment.
He needed a human being.
Theresa Spencer was one of Daniel's students. He'd always been kind of aware that she had a crush on him, although he'd done his best to ignore it at first. The university frowned upon things like that (although considering what else Daniel was doing, they probably shouldn't complain).
He hadn't intended to ask her to be the guinea pig in his experiments at first. But she'd expressed an interest in the idea of time travel during one of their tutorials, and Daniel had found himself admitting to what he was trying to do.
As soon as she'd heard that, Theresa had immediately volunteered her services for the experiment.
Daniel knew that using a human being was the only way to test his theories. But faced with Theresa's offer, suddenly there was a part of him wanting to stop, abandon his ideas, walk away. Theresa was one of his brightest students. Did he really want to take this chance? Because if he tried to send her to the future, but something went wrong, she mightn't have much of a future to be sent to.
He'd taken her down to his lab, shown her his apparatus, the special coats he needed to wear for prolonged exposure to radiation. Even as he watched how Theresa's eyes shone as she took it all in, Daniel knew he had to ask her one last time.
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
Theresa had turned to Daniel with hope in her eyes. "I'm sure."
You have any dizzy spells or double vision?
They'd agreed that they would keep their work a secret. Daniel knew what would happen if anyone other than himself, Theresa or his benefactor, Charles Widmore, ever found out. But it wasn't long before Theresa's sister Abigail came storming into Daniel's office.
"Just what the hell do you think you're doing with my sister?" Abigail had demanded, barging past Daniel in an attempt to grab Theresa by the arm and lead her out of the office. "She's not one of your lab rats, she's a human being. How dare you try and use her in this way?"
"Miss Spencer," Daniel began, but Abigail cut him off.
"Time travel? Ridiculous. You're taking the most dangerous risks with the health of my sister for research that's never going to work."
"But Abi," Theresa replied, "it does work."
Abigail stared at her. "What?"
"It's true." Theresa gazed earnestly at her sister. "Daniel's research works. He's sent me back to the past, to my schooldays...He's even sent me to the future."
"Rubbish!" Abigail snorted, but Theresa continued "May 1st, 1997. Tony Blair is elected the first Labour Prime Minister for 18 years. August 31st, 1997. Princess Diana and her lover are killed in a car crash in Paris, a week before the death of Mother Teresa from a heart attack."
Abigail rounded on Daniel. "What have you done to her?"
Theresa interrupted once more. "He's not done anything to me. We're in this together, every step of the way. Daniel's research is going to change the world, and I'm going to be right there with him. And if you can't accept that, I'd like you to leave."
Mouth opening and closing like a fish, Abigail had turned and walked out.
Daniel had been the first to recover the power of speech. "Uh, Theresa, you maybe shouldn't have said that."
But Theresa, eyes blazing, had rounded on him. "Yes, I should. Abi's always tried to hold me back. She can't handle the fact that her kid sister's going to do more with her life than she'll ever do. She's always resented me, and I won't put up with it any longer."
Daniel winced. He knew Abigail was the only one of Theresa's family that she was close to at that time. If she severed ties with her sister, she'd be leaving herself without a constant, running the risk of permanently unsticking herself in time.
"Theresa, don't do anything too hasty," he began, but was abruptly cut short as Theresa stumbled.
"Theresa?" he asked. "Are you okay?"
Theresa forced a smile. "Just a little dizziness. I think I got up too fast. I'm fine."
Nothing is gonna happen to you. Nothing. I won't let it.
Theresa continued to laugh off the dizzy spells, put the headaches down to working too hard, barely remarked on the nosebleeds.
She made a remark once to Daniel about "the two rats", when only one rat was there, but attempted to pass that off as a joke. Daniel went along with it - he didn't want to believe that the very thing he feared was starting to happen to Theresa.
But he couldn't ignore it after the day she told him she was going to visit her grandmother Spencer later.
"Your grandmother Spencer?" he'd asked, praying he'd heard wrong. He had notes on Theresa, everything he'd ever known about her, just in case he ever needed any of it for his work. And he knew from this that it couldn't be true.
Theresa nodded and smiled. "That's right."
Daniel shook his head. "You told me she died in 1992."
"1992?" Theresa repeated, confused. "That's not possible."
Daniel's heart began to race. "Er, Theresa? What year do you think it is?" he nervously asked.
The eyes that met his were clearly confused and scared. "It's 1988..."
******
Daniel had frantically leafed through his journals until all the equations blurred into one, notes about variables making less and less sense the more he studied them. He'd racked his brains trying to find a way to halt the progress of the unsticking of Theresa's consciousness. But if anything, his efforts were making her worse.
More and more, when Theresa came to his office, she'd forget things she'd known just five minutes earlier, appearing more and more uncertain of what year it was.
Towards the end of August 1997, Daniel made up his mind that the next time Theresa came to him, he'd tell her he wasn't prepared to experiment on her any longer. He couldn't take any more risks with her.
But the knock on the door the next time wasn't the one he was expecting.
"Come with me," Charles Widmore said, taking Daniel by the arm and marching him out to a black car. "I have to show you something."
He drove Daniel through the streets of Oxford until he reached the house where Theresa lived, dragged Daniel out of the car and marched him to the window.
"See this?" Widmore demanded, gesturing angrily through the window to where Theresa lay in bed, accepting the mouthful of food Abigail offered her but otherwise unresponsive. "She's been like this for the past four days. She doesn't respond to anything half the time, the other half she thinks she's four years old again."
Daniel's mouth dropped open, aghast. "Theresa?"
"This wasn't what was supposed to happen when I agreed to sponsor your research," Widmore snapped.
Daniel swallowed hard. "I - I can try and fix this," he stammered.
Widmore looked at him with disgust. "You can't even fix yourself," he sneered. "The best thing you can do is get out of here. I'm arranging for her treatment, and I've alresdy fixed things with the university."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cheque, which he handed to Daniel. "You want to carry on with your research, you take this and get the hell out of Oxford. I don't want to see you again until you have the answer to this."
Daniel looked at Widmore, nodded once. "I'll be gone tonight."
*****
Daniel was as good as his word. He never returned to Oxford, having left by the time Abigail paid her final visit to his office, shortly after the death of Princess Diana, fury over what had happened to Theresa combined with undeniable curiosity despite herself: how had they known?
He moved to Essex, Massachusetts, where he half heartedly attempted to continue with his research before abandoning it after several years, living his life under the care of a woman who persistently fussed over him.
He heard nothing further from Charles Widmore until one day in December 2004, when he received a telephone call. The man on the other end identified himself as Matthew Abaddon, calling on behalf of Widmore, saying that Widmore had instructions for him.
Daniel would be able to continue his work into time travel, to find the answers that would help Theresa, if he joined a mission Widmore was organising. A freighter was to depart from Fiji, bound for an island in the South Pacific. If Daniel boarded the freighter, he would find the answers he needed.
*****
But he's not thinking of Theresa now. He's thinking of Charlotte, collapsed in his arms, nose bleeding, confused just as Theresa had been.
Theresa had been a willing participant. She'd been aware of the risks. But Charlotte hadn't signed up for this.
There was nothing more Daniel could do for Theresa. But he's determined that nothing should happen to Charlotte.
All hope now lay with Desmond Hume, Daniel could only hope that he made it to Oxford, to Eloise Hawking.
Desmond was the only one who could save them.
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Daniel, Theresa, Abigail, Widmore. Mentions of Desmond, Charlotte and Matthew Abaddon.
Warnings: Spoilers for Jughead. This Place Is Death disregarded as writing of this begun before that episode aired.
Summary: Daniel remembers the events that led up to his departure from Oxford.
You're the only person who can help us. I need you to go back to Oxford University. Go back to where we met.
If the situation hadn't been so serious, Daniel would almost have laughed at this. The irony wasn't lost on him, that he needed Desmond Hume to do something to stop everyone's consciousness from becoming permanently unstuck in time. Because it was only thanks to Desmond that Daniel even knew it was possible in the first place, and thanks to Desmond that he hadn't abandoned his research at all.
When Desmond had turned up at Queen's College that day, Daniel hadn't believed him. Although he hadn't openly admitted to anyone at the college at the time that he was performing experiments into time travel, some of them knew at least that he was interested in the theory. They'd mock him to his face, address him by the name of that guy from Back to the Future.
So when Desmond turned up, claiming to have met Daniel in the future, Daniel had leapt to the conclusion that this was some feeble joke on the part of one of them.
It was only when Desmond had revealed that he knew about Eloise the rat, as well as telling Daniel to set his device to 2.342 and oscillating at 11 Hertz, that Daniel realised it couldn't be them. None of them knew about the rat, or understood the significance of the name Eloise.
And it was only when Daniel repeated his experiment using the numbers Desmond had given him, and Eloise had successfully navigated a maze he was not due to teach her for another hour, that he finally knew his research was working after all.
The jumps between the present and the future, she couldn't tell which was which. She had no anchor.
After Eloise died, Daniel repeated his experiment with a few other rats, just to be sure. And every time he set the device to the numbers Desmond had given him, the consciousness of the rat was sent to a different period in time.
But every time he tried it, the rat died, and Daniel knew why. The answer had been clear ever since his conversation with Desmond.
The brains of the rats were always short circuiting, because they had no anchor in both time periods. But Daniel also knew that the rats wouldn't have been able to form such an attachment.
He needed a human being.
Theresa Spencer was one of Daniel's students. He'd always been kind of aware that she had a crush on him, although he'd done his best to ignore it at first. The university frowned upon things like that (although considering what else Daniel was doing, they probably shouldn't complain).
He hadn't intended to ask her to be the guinea pig in his experiments at first. But she'd expressed an interest in the idea of time travel during one of their tutorials, and Daniel had found himself admitting to what he was trying to do.
As soon as she'd heard that, Theresa had immediately volunteered her services for the experiment.
Daniel knew that using a human being was the only way to test his theories. But faced with Theresa's offer, suddenly there was a part of him wanting to stop, abandon his ideas, walk away. Theresa was one of his brightest students. Did he really want to take this chance? Because if he tried to send her to the future, but something went wrong, she mightn't have much of a future to be sent to.
He'd taken her down to his lab, shown her his apparatus, the special coats he needed to wear for prolonged exposure to radiation. Even as he watched how Theresa's eyes shone as she took it all in, Daniel knew he had to ask her one last time.
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
Theresa had turned to Daniel with hope in her eyes. "I'm sure."
You have any dizzy spells or double vision?
They'd agreed that they would keep their work a secret. Daniel knew what would happen if anyone other than himself, Theresa or his benefactor, Charles Widmore, ever found out. But it wasn't long before Theresa's sister Abigail came storming into Daniel's office.
"Just what the hell do you think you're doing with my sister?" Abigail had demanded, barging past Daniel in an attempt to grab Theresa by the arm and lead her out of the office. "She's not one of your lab rats, she's a human being. How dare you try and use her in this way?"
"Miss Spencer," Daniel began, but Abigail cut him off.
"Time travel? Ridiculous. You're taking the most dangerous risks with the health of my sister for research that's never going to work."
"But Abi," Theresa replied, "it does work."
Abigail stared at her. "What?"
"It's true." Theresa gazed earnestly at her sister. "Daniel's research works. He's sent me back to the past, to my schooldays...He's even sent me to the future."
"Rubbish!" Abigail snorted, but Theresa continued "May 1st, 1997. Tony Blair is elected the first Labour Prime Minister for 18 years. August 31st, 1997. Princess Diana and her lover are killed in a car crash in Paris, a week before the death of Mother Teresa from a heart attack."
Abigail rounded on Daniel. "What have you done to her?"
Theresa interrupted once more. "He's not done anything to me. We're in this together, every step of the way. Daniel's research is going to change the world, and I'm going to be right there with him. And if you can't accept that, I'd like you to leave."
Mouth opening and closing like a fish, Abigail had turned and walked out.
Daniel had been the first to recover the power of speech. "Uh, Theresa, you maybe shouldn't have said that."
But Theresa, eyes blazing, had rounded on him. "Yes, I should. Abi's always tried to hold me back. She can't handle the fact that her kid sister's going to do more with her life than she'll ever do. She's always resented me, and I won't put up with it any longer."
Daniel winced. He knew Abigail was the only one of Theresa's family that she was close to at that time. If she severed ties with her sister, she'd be leaving herself without a constant, running the risk of permanently unsticking herself in time.
"Theresa, don't do anything too hasty," he began, but was abruptly cut short as Theresa stumbled.
"Theresa?" he asked. "Are you okay?"
Theresa forced a smile. "Just a little dizziness. I think I got up too fast. I'm fine."
Nothing is gonna happen to you. Nothing. I won't let it.
Theresa continued to laugh off the dizzy spells, put the headaches down to working too hard, barely remarked on the nosebleeds.
She made a remark once to Daniel about "the two rats", when only one rat was there, but attempted to pass that off as a joke. Daniel went along with it - he didn't want to believe that the very thing he feared was starting to happen to Theresa.
But he couldn't ignore it after the day she told him she was going to visit her grandmother Spencer later.
"Your grandmother Spencer?" he'd asked, praying he'd heard wrong. He had notes on Theresa, everything he'd ever known about her, just in case he ever needed any of it for his work. And he knew from this that it couldn't be true.
Theresa nodded and smiled. "That's right."
Daniel shook his head. "You told me she died in 1992."
"1992?" Theresa repeated, confused. "That's not possible."
Daniel's heart began to race. "Er, Theresa? What year do you think it is?" he nervously asked.
The eyes that met his were clearly confused and scared. "It's 1988..."
******
Daniel had frantically leafed through his journals until all the equations blurred into one, notes about variables making less and less sense the more he studied them. He'd racked his brains trying to find a way to halt the progress of the unsticking of Theresa's consciousness. But if anything, his efforts were making her worse.
More and more, when Theresa came to his office, she'd forget things she'd known just five minutes earlier, appearing more and more uncertain of what year it was.
Towards the end of August 1997, Daniel made up his mind that the next time Theresa came to him, he'd tell her he wasn't prepared to experiment on her any longer. He couldn't take any more risks with her.
But the knock on the door the next time wasn't the one he was expecting.
"Come with me," Charles Widmore said, taking Daniel by the arm and marching him out to a black car. "I have to show you something."
He drove Daniel through the streets of Oxford until he reached the house where Theresa lived, dragged Daniel out of the car and marched him to the window.
"See this?" Widmore demanded, gesturing angrily through the window to where Theresa lay in bed, accepting the mouthful of food Abigail offered her but otherwise unresponsive. "She's been like this for the past four days. She doesn't respond to anything half the time, the other half she thinks she's four years old again."
Daniel's mouth dropped open, aghast. "Theresa?"
"This wasn't what was supposed to happen when I agreed to sponsor your research," Widmore snapped.
Daniel swallowed hard. "I - I can try and fix this," he stammered.
Widmore looked at him with disgust. "You can't even fix yourself," he sneered. "The best thing you can do is get out of here. I'm arranging for her treatment, and I've alresdy fixed things with the university."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cheque, which he handed to Daniel. "You want to carry on with your research, you take this and get the hell out of Oxford. I don't want to see you again until you have the answer to this."
Daniel looked at Widmore, nodded once. "I'll be gone tonight."
*****
Daniel was as good as his word. He never returned to Oxford, having left by the time Abigail paid her final visit to his office, shortly after the death of Princess Diana, fury over what had happened to Theresa combined with undeniable curiosity despite herself: how had they known?
He moved to Essex, Massachusetts, where he half heartedly attempted to continue with his research before abandoning it after several years, living his life under the care of a woman who persistently fussed over him.
He heard nothing further from Charles Widmore until one day in December 2004, when he received a telephone call. The man on the other end identified himself as Matthew Abaddon, calling on behalf of Widmore, saying that Widmore had instructions for him.
Daniel would be able to continue his work into time travel, to find the answers that would help Theresa, if he joined a mission Widmore was organising. A freighter was to depart from Fiji, bound for an island in the South Pacific. If Daniel boarded the freighter, he would find the answers he needed.
*****
But he's not thinking of Theresa now. He's thinking of Charlotte, collapsed in his arms, nose bleeding, confused just as Theresa had been.
Theresa had been a willing participant. She'd been aware of the risks. But Charlotte hadn't signed up for this.
There was nothing more Daniel could do for Theresa. But he's determined that nothing should happen to Charlotte.
All hope now lay with Desmond Hume, Daniel could only hope that he made it to Oxford, to Eloise Hawking.
Desmond was the only one who could save them.