Oh man, this is where it gets exciting!
Donnie receives an intriguing message and April's date with Casey isn't going as planned.
Remember to review! Reviews are writer chow!
Donatello headed straight for the lab after dinner to continue with some of the projects that he had underway; a total of five, currently, if he counted April's armor, which was nearly ready. The search for a mutagen substitute was leading nowhere, and the holo interface prototype was turning out to be a real migraine inducer. But at least the blueprints for the new security grid were just about finished, and the mapping marbles were coming along beautifully if he did say so himself. And what better way to reward his brain for all the hard work than a little glucose for dessert. Together with the coffee, the energy boost would surely recharge his batteries enough to last him a few more hours.
So on his way out from the kitchen following his brothers and sister, he plucked the pop-tart package from the top of the fridge and helped himself to one of the baggies. As he crossed the main room, he started peeling off the wrapper as if he were undressing a lover.
Oh, sweet sugary bliss.
Once in his lab he was so engaged in the thorough licking of the icing that it took him a few seconds to notice the blinking of the cursor on his computer's screen.
Something was not right here. He was sure he'd signed off the chat when he was done talking to Monkey- err, with Dr. Rockwell. His confusion grew when he saw that on the chat window there was a username he'd never seen before, and he obviously hadn't logged it on to the Hamato network.
The message read simply:
Duzmachines: Donatello?
He stared at the words on the screen for a little bit in mild bewilderment, pop-tart held aloft in his hand, until a closer look at the username made him pause.
Duzmachines? Damn, that's good. Why didn't I think of that one?
That aside, he was pretty sure he had never authorized this new addition to the network, which meant this Duzmuchines had somehow, for some reason, violated his precious system. He wasn't used to it going the other way around.
This simply would not stand.
He promptly gripped the backrest of his chair, spun it and sat himself at the keyboard.
Allofdisnbrainz: Alright, who's doing this? And how did you get into this network?
The reply came almost immediately. Someone had been waiting for him...
Duzmachines: I hacked it :)
Allofdisnbrainz: No one can hack into my system but me.
Duzmachines: Exactly!
Allofdisnbrainz: I repeat: who is this?
Mikey?
How the heck did you do this?
Duzmachines: Not Mikey...
Donatello was already typing how he could just track the signal to find out who they were and then there would be hell to pay, and he was half-way through his threat, but Duzmachines was quicker.
A quick typer...
Duzmachines: Listen, we don't have that much time to talk and you're not going to believe me on the first try anyway, so I'll just say it.
Hold on to your shell!
Hold on to your shell... They were definitely a Hamato, or someone very close, and that didn't include many people. He waited for whatever big news was supposedly about to come and making sure to make the most unimpressed face possible in case of potential hidden cameras.
The awaited text message plopped into existence.
Duzmachines: I'm you, from the future.
Donatello's eyebrow ridges quirked upwards so high on his forehead that his mask came loose.
Well, he had to give them points for creativity.
And execution. Points for execution, too. And he had just been with those guys barely less than three minutes ago in the kitchen.
He could think of a few ways they could've done this, the most probable being that he left the manager open one day and they'd added the new user account while he was in the bathroom, or something. He hadn't set up the network so that anybody could join or invite other people. The mystery was easily solvable if given enough time, but before tracking down the source of the invading signal in order to find the culprit, he figured he might as well have a little fun.
After taking one reptilian bite out of his pop-tart, he hunched over the keyboard and typed avidly, heaving a hushed chuckle of disdain through his nose. If they thought they could outsmart him they had another thing coming.
Allofdisnbrainz: Wow.
Please tell me those new Nestor5 models are out, I've been dying for one of those.
Duzmachines: Sorry, none of that.
Allofdisnbrainz: OK, well at least tell me they found the Prothean ruins on Mars.
Duzmachines: No, but I invented Omnigel. True story.
Allofdisnbrainz: Cool! That must have been one heck of a fight against the evil pharmaceutical institution. Thankfully the Nobel Prize was worth it. And of course the gratitude of all of humanity.
Had any problems with copyright or did you just patent it with a different name?
Duzmachines: I expected you would take this as a joke.
Allofdisnbrainz: Right, because you're me from the future, so you would know that.
Duzmachines: Right.
Look, Donatello, you've obviously decided to play along just for giggles so this could go on ad infinitum.
I would know. Pranks can get quite creative if Mikey's involved, am I right?
So can I get your permission to skip the preambles so I can prove to you that I'm really you?
Donatello scowled, thinking they weren't making this as fun as he'd expected and he was quickly growing weary of it all. They must be building up one hell of a punchline.
And did they just admit Mikey was the culprit? The idea sure was Mikey's style, but the execution… How did Mikey do this? How could any of his siblings do this? Absurd. Although inexplicably he had seen Mikey do more impressive things with Kraang tech...
He pushed his chair away from the desk, getting up and crossing the lab in four giant strides. Peeking outside, he spotted Mikey on the couch deeply invested in his shooter videogame.
I'm not sure what I expected.
He went back to his desk, looked around askance as if the anatomy posters on the walls could hold an answer, then sat down again. He stared blankly at the screen for a few seconds, the cursor blinking steadily over the last received message.
"Hey, Mikey?" he called loudly, not taking his eyes off the chat.
"Yeaaah?" came Mikey's voice from the living room.
"Where's Raph?"
"Uh, he's out scouting."
"What about Casey?"
"Gotta be with Raph, obviously!"
Donnie's brow knitted in thought.
"Leo?" he yelled, though this was hardly Leo's style.
"Leo's meditating in his room, Splinter's in the kitchen cleaning, and I can hear Karai's music from here," Mikey recited all in one, seemingly just to get it over with. "Dude, what's with the roll call?"
"Nevermind!"
Donnie hummed to himself. Who else could it have been? Who else did he know? April? He picked up the T-phone and wrote a text.
Allofdisnbrainz: Hey, what are you up to?
April's reply took a minute.
RednYelloKillaFello: Hey.
Videochat with dad. Why?
Allofdisnbrainz: No reason. Just bored.
Talk later.
He put the phone down. The possibility that this could still all be part of a very elaborate ruse and everybody was in on it was still real, of course, but…
He gauged the different possible explanations and assigned percentages. The results were interesting: it was actually more probable for this to be actual future Donatello than for any of his brothers to have found a way into his system. Could they have gotten help from someone? Dr. Rockwell was brilliant but, as far as Donatello knew, a noob in the field of computer engineering.
The prank was quickly losing its comedic properties. In fact, Donnie was now starting to doubt this was a prank at all so much as someone messing with him, and he was now worried that this guy, whoever it was, knew about him and Mikey, and probably many other things.
He was starting to panic, considering the shut down of his computer and a complete system reformatting just in case, to get rid of the invasion.
But he stopped himself short of pulling the plug. Whoever this guy was, he knew too much, and Donnie couldn't just lose track of him. Time to locate this asshole.
The chat pinged just as he was firing up the program to do just that.
Duzmachines: Hey, listen. We're running out of time to talk and I'd really like to get somewhere with this as soon as possible, so I'm just gonna give myself permission.
Because I knew you'd need it, I've already got something good in store.
Donatello shrugged to himself. What the hell, let's see what they got.
Allofdisnbrainz: Shoot.
Duzmachines: There you are! OK.
When you were 7, you got an idea for a working model spaceship that you planned to build out of an old washing machine. You kept the project hidden because everybody was teasing you so much about being obsessed with the old "Cosmos" series.
You named your project "Ship of the Imagination". Everything was going well until it exploded.
Luckily you were wearing goggles but Master Splinter got so mad that he confiscated all your precious chemicals and tools.
You've never told this story to anyone.
Donatello's jaw dropped.
The dude from the chat was right: he'd never told anyone. Sure, everybody caught the explosion, and they'd laughed at his cost for weeks. But the project's purpose and name? Yeah, those parts he left out, and the blueprints were all coded in his made-up language. There was no way they'd let him forget about it in years if they found out, and he'd had enough of their wise-cracking to last a while.
He hadn't thought about that incident since he was 12.
Duzmachines: I could've gone with something even more personal for greater impact, but I've sort of got an audience and you know how our brothers are. Sorry I had to give away our secret to these lewd bastards, they're laughing themselves stupid as I type.
Donnie made a choked sound and stroked an imaginary goatee, trying to process what was happening. The tracking program was taking its sweet time as well. Apparently the signal was very weak, and it had made a very long trip.
He had to admit, he had no explanation for this.
Duzmachines: You still there?
...pinged the stranger in the chat...
"Was that one of the guys?" Casey asked. He was holding the ice pack against his forehead, waiting for April to put the T-Phone back down.
April thought about lying, but knew it wouldn't be much use.
"Donnie. He just wanted to ask about something," she said, plopping down on the chair in front of Casey.
She didn't take pride in this whole thing. Lying to Donnie had not been part of the day's plan and she'd been close to just telling him the truth. But she didn't. She couldn't.
Just the thought of Donnie knowing that Casey was over at her place made her stomach churn. The two of them alone, on an 'actual date'… even when the date was as good as over considering their plans had been thwarted, all thanks to Casey and his hero complex.
"So I'm guessing you haven't told him?" Casey said, reading her expression, and she bristled. She didn't appreciate the reminders when she was already doing her best not to think about Donnie on her date with Casey. And she was still angry about what happened at the park, so… She was basically working really hard to keep her bad temper at bay.
"Are you seriously starting that again? I'm going to tell him! Soon! Meanwhile, you shh! Gimme your arm," she commanded, making sure to douse the ball of cotton with a generous amount of alcohol.
"Okay, fine… But you know, it's gonna hurt more the longer you w-AAAAAH FUCK!" Casey screamed when April deliberately rubbed the saturated cotton along the gash on his forearm and he pulled it away in a reflex, holding it to his chest like a wounded animal.
"Sorry," she said in a sweet voice, and was quick to change the subject. "You know what would have helped you? Aside from being a little smarter than to go picking fights with a gang of hormonal kids, of course…"
"What," Casey grunted suspiciously, still feeling the stinging aftershocks of the alcohol.
"Ninja training," she said tartly. "You should let Master Splinter teach you a thing or two about unarmed combat, just so you could hold your own if this ever happens again. It saved my life, you know? More than once."
"Ain't no savvy like street savvy, Red, and Casey Jones's very street wise. Those guys were just playing dirty. Next time, I'll be ready."
April rolled her eyes. She had tried to talk him into training with Master Splinter several times, but as he put it, he had no interest in "circus acrobatics". And she was in no mood to argue with his thick skull.
"Well, looks like the night's taken an interesting turn of events." Casey stretched and his breath caught in his throat at the audible crack.
"If you wanna call it that. I'd rather be in a movie theater right now instead of cleaning dirt out of your cuts," she retorted and started picking up all the blood-stained wipes, throwing them in the bin.
"No matter, Red. We can have fun here too."
April released a sharp exhale, regarding his cheeky expression with a sarcastic half smile.
"You don't seem all that ready for anything fun," she said, and deliberately poked his side where she knew he had the nastiest bruise. He jumped with a squeak. "But I guess we can always catch up on some of that homework."
Casey's face blanched.
"Are you serious?" he squealed and she laughed evilly, grouchiness finally starting to let up.
"Nah, you've been pummelled enough. But pull another stupid stunt like at the park and we're doing calculus on our next date."
"Wouldn't you love that cuz you just looove talking about school and playing good student, dontcha," he accused.
"You callin' me a nerd?" she said in mock indignation.
"You said it, not me."
She smacked him in the arm.
"I don't love school, I'm just trying to be responsible. You know what that word means, Casey Jones?"
Casey made a noise like a horse's sneeze as sole response and April slowly shook her head, cross-armed.
"Hey, don't you have a laptop?" Casey said quickly before she mentioned homework again. "We could find the movies online! It'll be like the theater, only cosier. And we can pause for pee breaks."
"Yeah, right. You're just trying to get out of studying," she joked, but got up to retrieve the laptop from her room. "I doubt we'll find anything better than a cam for the new movie, though. We'd need Donnie for that."
And there it was again: Donnie's name, popping up everywhere like daisies. She inwardly kicked herself in the shin for bringing it up after what she herself had said on the matter, and prayed Casey hadn't heard that last part.
Duzmachines: Donatello? You still there?
Donatello was there. To a degree, at least…
He felt lightheaded, thunderstruck, and for a moment there he could've sworn he'd practically blacked out. It couldn't be, but there it was, as real as Earth's rotation. He was -for lack of a better expression- talking to himself.
When more words appeared on the screen accompanied by the usual ping, he shook his head and tried to concentrate on what to say next. What do I say to my future self? What do I ask? Should I even ask or would that indeed cause some sort of temporal paradox?
Duzmachines: Is that a stunned silence? Do I have your attention?
Did you faint?
With a final blink of his eyes, Donnie was finally able to will his fingers to move over the keyboard.
Allofdisnbrainz: No…
I think...
This is still kind of hard to believe though.
Either you're telling the truth and are really me from the future or there's a new mutant in New York who has both psychic powers and a vast knowledge in computer science.
Duzmachines: Both possible, after all you meet more than of half the qualifications.
Which do you think is more probable here?
Allofdisnbrainz: I'm still trying to figure that one out…
Duzmachines: Trust me, we're just as freaked out on this end!
Would you like me to explain the science?
Allofdisnbrainz: The science is always welcome.
Duzmachines: Worm hole. One of the tiny ones. I've spent a good five months researching, going through almanacs and old news reports, magazines on the paranormal, what have you. I was looking for weird lights in the sky, strange localized weather phenomena, planes going missing, that kind of thing- to find a wormhole that would come close to both your location and ours, at the right time.
Allofdisnbrainz: The signal's not coming from New York. I haven't had time to track the source, but I can tell that much.
Duzmachines: No, it's not in New York. Yet. The wormhole is in Earth's trajectory so you will be able to pick it up in a couple of days, maybe. I'm using satellites to amplify and bounce the signal. The wormhole is in constant movement in relation to the planet, so I have to recallibrate in real time. I wrote a program specifically for that purpose. It's using data from servers all over the world.
You could roast a chicken over the CPU.
Allofdisnbrainz: You're saying it'll be in New York. Are you planning on, you know, coming here?
Duzmachines: That is exactly what we're planning.
A high pitched clamor of excitement forced its way out of Donatello's throat. It wasn't enough that he was talking to his future self; he was eventually going to meet himself in person. This was getting better by the moment and his seat was becoming unbearably small, incapable of containing his restless rump.
Allofdisnbrainz: How far in the future are we talking exactly?
Duzmachines: Exactly? Ten years, two months, thirteen days, four hours and forty-five seconds.
Allofdisnbrainz: Ten years?
Duzmachines: I know, right!
Allofdisnbrainz: You're me ten years in the future?
Duzmachines: Sure am! I've been planning this for months so you know I'm ecstatic.
Allofdisnbrainz: Is… everybody there?
Duzmachines: There's a few of us here right now. But I'm not spilling any details, so don't even bother asking. Spoilers aren't good foDOMNEI OMG ITS U THIS I AMLZIGN!1!
Allofdisnbrainz: Mikey?
Duzmachines: Yes, Mikey. Sorry about that. He finally managed to reach the keyboard despite our best efforts.
Donatello laughed out loud, a cackle laced with incredulity and a somewhat manic elation, resounding on the lab's tall, bare walls.
Allofdisnbrainz: Holy Toledo, I can't believe this! Look what you've accomplished! You completely kicked the space-time continuum in the nuts!
Duzmachines: And we're about to do much more! You and I are going to literally rip space-time a new one.
Allofdisnbrainz: What's the occasion?
Duzmachines: Sorry, past Donatello, that part will have to wait until next time. It's a long story and I can only maintain the connection for so long today. The portal is about to go out of range. It'll be easier to communicate the closer the wormhole is to Earth.
Allofdisnbrainz: Wait!
When do we get to talk again? How are you going to make this work?
Hello?