Jack and Benny hurried down the corridor together, this time ignoring the patterns and designs on the walls. Benny was hurriedly typing into her comms device, and thrust it out to Jack as it began to ring. "Take the call. I don't have enough willpower to deal with him right now."
"By 'him', I'm going to assume you mean Irving," observed Jack drily, even as Benny started to hunt through her pockets. "What are you doing?"
She shushed him, waving her hands. They rounded a corner, and headed towards the faint, flickering light up ahead.
The communications link beeped, and the system took up the call. The slightly worried face of Irving Braxiatel faded into fuzzy view.
"-finally!" he exclaimed, sounding as if he had just got to the end of an extremely long sentence. "Where have you been, and why- where's Ruth?"
"It's a long story," Jack said. Benny motioned for him to stop, having finally found her diary and arrived in precisely the place where she wanted (and needed) to be. She sat down on the ground, and started to leaf through it. "By the way, Benny here stole your copy of the Guide."
"She what?" Irving yelled- so loudly that it almost sounded like he was in the corridor with them. "Does she have any idea how expensive- and rare- that is? And she brought it to Minas IV with her?!"
"Yes," called Benny, without looking up. "Of course I know how expensive and rare and etcetera it is- which is why I made an electronic copy of it, and left the actual copy at home. Honestly, Brax, what do you take me for?"
"Irving," corrected the owner of the White Rabbit irritably.
"Sorry," said Benny, without sounding sorry in the least. "Force of habit."
Jack managed to hide his grin, and brought the conversation back on track. "We got sucked up by a portal. Well, to be fair, Benny got sucked up, I followed her-"
"For the record," the archaeologist interjected. "It was the same sort of rift as before, just a bit lower key."
"And Ruth is currently back where the Irverfield is parked," continued Jack. "Along with those two kids- Calvin and Hobbes, right? And a girl called Ciara, who is actually the daughter of the head of this planet's Council, and should have been sacrificed to the gods."
Irving was actually silent for a moment, with his eyebrow half-raised in the air and getting higher with every passing second.
"We got transported to this tomb place when Benny found an obscure loophole in the Guide that let us borrow the help of a god or two. We've been checking up the backstory, and it turns out that Ruthie-girl is a part of this planet's history."
The eyebrow was still ascending. It was in danger of disappearing, high into the clouds, and emerging somewhere near the peaks of the Himalayan Mountains, or whatever equivalent Legion had.
"So," Jack said. "Basically, we're trapped here, with no way of helping them, and our usual resident smartypants is currently leafing through her old diary entries and not being of any help at all."
There was a pause.
"Well," Irving said slowly- (the eyebrow retreating to a safe point)- "what do you want me to do about it?"
Jack scratched his head. "Well- I kind of assumed that you'd-"
"What, exactly?"
"No idea," he confessed. "Actually, Benny- why did you call him up in the first place? He seems to be being even more deliberately unhelpful than usual, and considering how he normally is… well, what was the idea?"
"One second," she said, flipping a page, and stabbing a triumphant finger into the middle of a sea of sticky notes and scribbles. "Aha! Gotcha!" She stood up, and moved over to the video conference. "I remember finding the remnants of an Anubian-style tomb a while back, and I made some notes. Aside from some references to the," she coughed. "um, purely professional relationships I had with one of the site managers (and to be fair to me, he was really hot)- yep, apart from that, me and a friend managed to puzzle out how one of their machines worked. Like I said, they were really quite advanced. They had a networking series of teleportation devices that linked the rooms of the tomb together."
"We can use them to get out?" Jack asked. "I mean, hop around 'till we find another portal, then dive through it?"
"Correctamundo," Benny beamed, bopping him on the nose. Her mood had improved remarkably as soon as she had realized that there was actually a chance of them surviving this. "There's only one slight problem, though- we need the activation codes. And that's where Irving here comes in."
"Excellent," Irving said sarcastically. "I'll just go pull out this list of ancient Anubian teleportation device codes that I just happened to have lying around, then. Whoopee. You're saved."
Benny attempted to poke him on the nose too, but only succeeded in making the screen of the comms unit warp and distort. "No need. Just do me a favour and look up pictures of Minas IV ruins on GalNet."
Irving brought up a browsing program, off screen, and started to type into it. "Anywhere specific?"
"If you can work it out, the place where we are right now. It's pretty big- circular in shape- and has a compass-type design spread across the domed roof. Looks like an antechamber."
"Got it," he said after a moment. "What am I looking for- ah."
Jack looked around. "Well, what did you find?"
"A sequence of numbers- an activation code, to be precise." Irving sounded highly amused for some reason. "In Bernice's handwriting."
Benny produced a thick black pen from her pocket, and winked, taking the lid off. "Well, don't leave us in suspense. What are they?"
"Seven, seven, four, five, dash, six, one, two, three," related Irving. Benny wrote them down carefully on the wall behind them triumphantly. "Very clever. I'm sure you're aware that this breaks all of the primary laws of Time- but clever nonetheless."
"I thought so," Benny answered smugly.
"Oh," Jack realized with a start. "That's the activation code… from the future… which only exists because you wrote it… wait, isn't that a paradox?"
"Probably," Irving said. "Is that all you need me for, or can I actually get on with tending the bar before I lose all of my customers?"
Benny considered. "Nope, that's about it. Thanks, by the way."
"Any time, Bernice." With a fizz and a beep, the connection disintegrated. Jack and Benny looked at each other.
"Well," Jack said. "What now?"
"Now," said Benny, kicking at what seemed to be thin air-it wasn't, it made a loud clanging noise and shimmered, resolving itself into the shape of a transport capsule- "well, now we do exactly what you suggested. We go hopping around, looking for a portal to dive into."
"Good plan," Jack nodded, then paused. "Oh, and Benny?"
"Yeah?"
"Can you please stop prompting me to ask all the stupid questions? I'm really getting sick of it."
Basically a lot more talking in this chapter. Sorry about that. Lots of action and stuff coming up soon!
Speaking of which, I did finally get around to reading Big Bang Generation, and it is amazing. 10/10 would recommend. Go get it, immediately.
See you all next time!
Kitty
