Chapter Twenty-Three: Treasure Hunting
Jubilee stepped in to Lucas' room and took a brief mental picture of the room, just as it was.
"It has to look just like this when I leave." She said to herself.
"But," she touched a finger to her lips and bit the nail nervously. "His room's so small." And it was, not only smaller than Jubilee's room, but Emma's as well. "Why take the small room when you're the only one onboard?" It wasn't particularly close to any of the stations other facilities. What benefit might there be?
There were no real decorations to speak of. An X-Uniform and several sweatshirts from the Xavier Institute and his School for the Gifted hung in the closet. "Speaking of boring." She observed.
The trashcan betrayed a few crumpled and shredded pages of quantum math equations, at least one page of which bore human teeth-marks. After a moment she realized that Lucas was trying to calculate, to his best guess, the polar opposite of a set of co-ordinates.
"Duh, even the computer can't do that." And she suddenly realized how much time and energy he must have invested in re-uniting his parents. She hung her head low and wondered what kind of man, both chews his math and makes things like this happen.
"Pretty cool." She, reluctantly, admitted out loud.
A streak of purple was reflected on the wall over his bed. It was coming through the small rounded, rectangular window.
She crawled across the bed to look out the room's only window.
And she was amazed, for a moment, forgetting to breathe.
There hung the small blue earth below; In a constant state of purple-plasmic-flux. It was not the occasional flare of plasma that could be seen from so many other windows on the station. Instead it was a constant and steady flickering dance.
"What's going on?" She wondered, then squinted. It was the Americas, alive and overlapping in hot purple lightning.
And it slowly dawned on her. There were far more probabilities, and therefor, far more dimensions overlapping here than say, in the ocean, or the less populated areas. It was beautiful.
Soon she found herself sitting, with her knees pulled up to her chest, and just staring out the window.
"Best seat in the house." She had said it to herself, but in Lucas' voice. It was just a guess, not real telepathy, but it felt like an educated guess.
After a while she noticed the original glare that attracted her attention was dancing across her face where she sat. She turned her head to see it on the wall and was struck again by how much it looked like natural light reflected on the playful waves of a gentle lake.
And she looked up, where this same natural effect of the light danced above Lucas' bed.
And she noticed for the first time that the roof of his little bed alcove was impressed, raised by several inches.
And vandalized. . .She realized.
Someone had taken a blue marker and drawn, scribbled and written all over the roof.
She scooted down, stretched out on his bed and looked up properly.
Someone had drawn a picture on this station, orbiting and earth and obviously drawn from this window's view. Written beneath it was the figure "1:1" (Pronounced "One to One" and representing balance or equality).
She studied it for a moment, then touched the metal where it was scrawled.
"Is this how you get to sleep?" She whispered. "How you let go of all those worlds and finally sleep?" She understood. It had kept her up, probably Emma too, after a flurry of activity or a string of major or minor dimensional aversions, it's hard to leave it be. You can't help but turn it over in your mind, there are so many worlds, surely they all need something, some of them right now. . .
But she had Emma. Lucas was here alone.
And she could see what they had in common. He was the only person in his world too, before Emma's accidental arrival and surprise residence. Alone in infinity, literally. . .
And Jubilee looked up to where, the much taller, Lucas' eyes would have fallen were he lying in his bed.
And her mouth opened slowly, hanging in shock, tinged with relief.
He had used the marker to turn the dancing reflection on the ceiling in to a roughly drawn river. Kneeling at the river was a dark and shadowy human form, half crumpled and collapsed. But reflected in his 'river' of real dancing light, was a careful, but roughly drawn face. Her hair was wild (and blue), her eyes were thin slits (and blue), but over her reflected eye, was a thin "M". It was the only piece of the whole drawing that betrayed a perfect color match.
She widened her view. While he had drawn a river and allowed it to be animated by the natural reflection, the reflection's edges were not aligned to the hand drawn river edges.
The edges of the reflection were not purple, they were white and rimmed with a thin ribbon of deep, neon red that was constantly flaring and flowing out of the reflection.
And she could see that he had rimmed the river scene with four pair of (blue) marker drawn hands so as to give the impression that the hands were firing the flaring white/red rim of the reflection.
"You. . ." She had forgotten that he wasn't there, and they didn't know each other. "You did this that night, after I saw you but before. . ."
She touched a hand to her lips again, and fought the urge to bite her nails.
Eight hours later:
"Jubilee, can you come up here?" The intercom repeated.
"Uh, sure." She shook her head awake. "What is it Emma?"
"Hank's done it. We're ready to send you."
"Let me shower. I overslept."
"You've got about twenty minutes until we're supposed to retrieve his parents."
"Thanks Em."
Jubilee swept out of bed and scooped up her clothes. She had put this outfit together in advance, complete with accessories. The bundle was menacingly heavy, a part of her despised the weight and expressed this displeasure as an equally sized knot in her stomach.
It's more honest this way. . . She reassured herself. At least, if they see it, they'll know you might be dangerous. They'll think twice. . .
She hoped. The idea of a world FULL of people. . .
She showered with the door open and toweled herself off. She pulled on her clothes, and with a moments hesitation, finally tied the leather strap around her leg, above the knee, securing her gun at her side.
"Someone puttin' on a play?" Wolverine asked as she entered the room.
"Nice to meet you. Welcome to my home." Jubilee bit sarcastically.
"Actually Logan, the period costumes were my idea." Hank smiled, absently scratching at the back of his head. "We've taken the liberty of providing your sizes as well." Beast tossed Logan a backpack. "You can change right through there."
"Probably want to wear his yellow spandex." Jubilee rumbled low enough that only Wolverine could hear her, a habit she'd developed on her own world where she had often served as his sidekick.
He pretended to laugh, and cast her a glance, but he was wearing it under his clothes.
"This is a-dorable!" Marie was looking in to the bag, having swept it up and began trekking toward the 'changing' room. "And I love what you're wearing." Marie told Jubilee, shooting a look to Logan who simply shrugged helplessly at Beast.
Beast smiled understandingly and handed Logan a set of pointy-toed boots. "Lose the steel toe's Logan." He whispered and proceeded off to make his final preparations for their departure.
"So how's this work again?" Jubilee stepped in to the booth.
"It's a microwave chamber." Hank explained, and she jumped right out.
He smiled. "Not that kind Jubilee." He looked down at the control panel and calculated in Logan's extra mass to the power distribution network. "It's simulating the conditions of Lucas' accident internally and allowing you to use the stations normal transportation technology to deposit you in the past."
He found a loose screw on the front of a panel and pulled out a screwdriver. He proceeded to tighten it down. "I think."
She eyed him. "Are you kid-ding?" She ventured.
"Mostly." He admitted. "There is an extremely finite chance that the waveform we're creating will travel to the future instead of the past.
"In which case?" Jubilee didn't like the sound of this.
"The Keeper of that time will be able to alter one variable and use this equipment to either return you here or send you strait on to your original destination. It's all right here in the computer." He patted the machine, but saw she was still nervous. He took her hand. "Don't worry. I've got this."
She exhaled. "Sorry. Just a rocky start." She smiled. "And I'm excited."
"I understand." Beast patted her hand and wandered off.
"Can you use that?" Came the gruff voice from behind her.
And without missing a beat or breath she instantly produced the gun, with a lightning flourish that ended in the drawing back of the hammer, as it met Logan's right eye.
His eye twitched and he moved instinctively, despite himself. Inside he winced. That never would have happened before. . . He chastised himself.
"I've had plenty of time to practice. Found myself an empty dimension and did nothing but." She explained, re-holstering it twice as fast.
"Training for a mission?" He asked.
She shrugged. "Can't carry it and not know how to use it."
"Using it ain't the same as killing." Wolverine eyed her "You up for killin' with it?"
"I could kill just fine without it." She assured him. "But I've never killed anything I didn't want to eat."
"Hunter hunh?" He asked.
"When I had to be." She pushed past him. She had the feeling he was looking for a flaw, something to exploit.
Nothing wrong with huntin' like that. . . He admitted quietly to himself. Sarcastic little bitc. . .
"Ta-DA!" Marie stepped out of the changing room with a flourish to model her new western wear.
Logan let out a burst of breath. "You look fine darlin'. Too fine. We should move out west." He leered at her obviously and leisurely.
"You know, we can get you two a room." Jubilee whispered to Marie who was staring back, looking to Logan, playfully and expectantly.
"Actually, Jubilee, If Logan would change his clothes. . ." But beast didn't have to say any more.
"Come on now Logan." Marie was pushing him towards the door of the changing room. "Don't be such a baby."
He slowed only to retrieve his beer from the counter as he passed, and then relented and entered the room.
"And you." Marie slapped Jubilee playfully on her shoulder. "Don't encourage him." She smiled slyly "That's mah job." She explained.
"Now, children." Emma entered the room, apparently quite pleased with herself. "Do play nice."
"And I ain't wearing these chaps!" Logan growled through the door. This was followed by two bursts of steel, some ripping, and the sound of a lump of leather being thrown violently to the floor.
Beast sighed. Then shrugged. You can't please everyone. He reasoned, and turned his attention, instead, to Emma.
"Good morning." He breathed heavily as he passed her.
"Very." She agreed, following him out of the room.
Jubilee and Marie exchanged glances and raised eyebrows.
"Is it a good morning Jubilee?" Marie asked, tossing her hair excessively.
"Very!" Jubilee replied in a throaty exhale while striking a dramatic pose.
And they chuckled a bit and continued what they were doing, preparing to leave.
