A/N (5/27/04): This is a fun chapter! I really like this chapter. Maybe Elfcarii will appear in this chapter. Prolly not, but I dunno. I can't finish it until tomorrow, 'cause I still have to get me brother's explanation of time travel, which will prolly include warp drive an' a whole lot o' other Star Trek nonsense, but hey, it annoys Jack.
Whoops, forgot to reply to reviews in the last chapter!
Fireblade K'Chona: Sure, I can put Lavan in. I suppose. I'll see if I remember.
Elfcarii: I like shiny too. Don't worry, there's enough for everyone. And there's sugar to spare. This is definitely after PotC, but it's a prepeat for Barbossa, meaning the vortex transported him forward in time from (for him) before PotC. Ask Tom. He could explain.
Yep, yer in, prolly in the next chapter. Yay! Now lessee if more people actually read this an' participate in the contest.
Whoops, forgot the Disclaimer last chapter as well! Anyhoo, I don't own the song lyrics, I just memorized them. Actually I got them from websites because that took less time than typing them out, but I still memorized them or I wouldn't put them here, because for Lyn to sing them she had to've memorized them. I realized the other day that I own Jack Junior! Woohoo! That's about all I own in this story. Actually, I did make up the "Proud to Be a Buccaneer" song, but I don't own the music—it's a parody of "God Bless the USA." Don't blame me—it's my sister's fault! She wrote this "Proud to Be a Republican" song for her away message.
It was just another normal—or not-so-normal—day in the vortex, with the Black Pearl sailing innocently—or not-so-innocently—before the breeze, when all of a sudden a piece of electronics—it might have been an electron microscope, for all Lyn knew—landed smack-dab in the middle of the deck. That's the sound it made: smack-dab!
"What was that?" Jack asked. That would be Jack Junior, but Lyn didn't like calling him Junior.
"That was the sound of a machine landing on the ship," Tom explained.
"What's this?" one of the pirates—the dwarf, Zhao—asked. He pushed one of the buttons and the device fell apart.
"No! Stop! Not good!" Tom shouted, pushing Zhao out of the way. The dwarf rolled across the deck, got up, and dusted himself off indignantly. Tom stuck out his tongue in concentration as he put the device back together. Then he pressed "start." The device began to vibrate. The pirates freaked, fleeing in every direction until they came to the rails of the ship or the top of the masts.
Lyn walked over to "Uncle Jack." Jack (Junior) watched the way she walked, admiring her thin frame and her swaying walk. She could almost be a boy, but he didn't care. She was lovely. "Oh, Tom, Uncle Jack was wonderin' about the time travel stuff. Mebbe ye can 'splain it to 'im," Lyn said.
Uncle Jack looked a bit furious. "No, that's really alright, Tom. I really don't need to know," he said a bit desperately.
Tom explained anyways. "Wormhole time travel depends on two things. One is wormholes have some mass, and the mass is very concentrated. So, if you go into a wormhole at an angle, you'll slingshot around that mass, and so that makes you travel through time."
"Who cares about wormholes?" Katie asked. "They're out in space."
"There's random quantities of chronotonic particles throughout space," Tom replied. "And so, if you run into a high concentration of these particles, you'll travel through time. Warp drives can be used to concentrate these particles into a small area. Therefore warp drives can be used to travel through time. In the vortex, there are large amounts of these chronotonic particles, so there is a high probability that you will be displaced in time."
"Whoa, run that by me again," Jack Junior said. "What exactly are chronotinic particles?"
"Please, no," Uncle Jack begged. "My head hurts. You're giving me a hangover!"
"Chronotonic particles are small particles that consist of matter and energy that is focused at the frequency that matter needs to be transported through time. So, if you have enough of these particles, you can transport a large mass through time. But if you don't have enough of these particles, the mass will hold itself together, and prevent itself from being transported through time.
"There's also another way to time-travel," Tom continued. "If you slingshot around a large mass, such as the sun, you'll travel through time, and depending on which way you slingshot, you'll travel more or less or forwards or backwards, though those physics are a bit too complicated for you people to understand. And so if you slingshot around, you accelerate to a very high velocity, but then gravity keeps you within a certain radius of the mass, and so the body that you're trying to transport through time has to eventually go somewhere, but it can't go away from the large mass, but it can transport through time, and so the closer you are to the large mass, the more you're transported through time. Perhaps that's what's happening in the vortex; it circles around a large mass in the center and slingshots people through time."
Uncle Jack got Tom back by asking Lyn to sing. Lyn was only too happy to oblige.
"If tomorrow all the loot were gone I'd stolen on this run,
An' I had to start again, with jes' me captain and 'is son,
I'd thank my lucky stars that I was on this ship today,
'Cause the flag still stands for freedom, an' they can't take that away!
An' I'm proud to be a buccaneer, where at least I know I'm free,
An' I won't forget the captain brave, who gave that right to me,
An' I'd proudly stand up next to you an' defend 'er out at sea,
'Cause there ain't no doubt, I love this ship, a pirate's life for me!
From the taverns of Tortuga, to the slums of Port Royal,
Across the waves that take us where seagulls wheel an' call,
We'll sail to that horizon, in good spirits all the way,
'Cause there's pride in every buccaneer 'eart, an' it's time we stood to say:
I'm proud to be a buccaneer, where at least I know I'm free,
An' I won't forget the captain brave, who gave that right to me,
An' I'd proudly stand up next to you an' defend 'er out at sea,
'Cause there ain't no doubt, I love this ship, a pirate's life for me!"
"I love this song!" Uncle Jack said.
"Lyn, you have a lovely voice," Jack told her.
"Really bad eggs!" Lyn exclaimed, earning her an odd look from Jack. Then she sang Alan Jackson's "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere."
"Excellent!" Jack exclaimed. "Let's hear another."
Lyn thought for a bit, then began to sing Toby Keith's "American Soldier."
"Lyn," said Tom, "am I seeing double?"
"Don' see why ye should be," Lyn said with a frown. "Yer not drunk. Oh, ye mean Jack Junior! Tom, meet Captain Jack Sparrow, Junior. Jack, meet me brother, Tom."
Jack bowed with a flourish. "Delighted to make your acquaintance, ol' chap," he said.
"Er, nice to meet you," Tom replied.
"Tom, did ye say?" Jack asked. "Not Tornado Tom! But I've heard so much about ye."
"What're you doing in our time?" Tom asked. Everyone semi-understood him, now that he'd explained the time travel, even though thinking about the explanation made their brains hurt.
"We were looking for Bootstrap Bill Turner the First."
"You'll never find him," Tom said. "He got squashbuckled."
"I thought it was smushbuckled," Lyn said.
"Well, that too," Tom agreed. The sun almost fell out of the sky in shock. Tom was actually agreeing with his sister!
"Smushbuckled?" Jack asked.
"You probably don't really want to know," his father told him. "This is one of those things best left not understood."
"I think I want to know," Jack insisted.
"'E was smushed into fine powder by the crushing black oblivion of Davy Jones' Locker," Lyn explained.
"Say, where's Lisa?" Katie asked.
"She said she couldn't miss any more school," Tom said.
There was a long silence. Lyn began to get bored. She decided to play a the old "Speaking of…" game, where they'd say "Speaking of…" then something random. "Speaking of roads…" Lyn began.
Katie took up where Lyn left off. "You know the saying, "All roads lead to Rome"? Wouldn't that mean that all roads also lead away from Rome?"
"Who cares about Rome?" Tom asked. "Rome fell."
"It was Latin's fault." Lyn grinned at all the uncomprehending glances she received. "Latin is a dead language, as dead as it can be; first it killed the Romans, an' now it's killin' me."
"But Latin didn't fall with Rome," Katie said.
Lyn noticed that Jack was staring at her chest. "Jack, why're ye starin' at me chest?"
"I was wondering about your necklace," he replied.
"It's a Ring," Lyn said happily.
"Yes, love, I can see that."
"Then why did you ask?"
"Why are you wearing it around your neck?"
"It's the Ring," Lyn said condescendingly. "The One Ring. You know,
Three Rings for the Elven-kings, under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne,
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie."
"So?" Jack asked.
"So if I wear it on my finger, it makes me invisible. Which is why I'm wearin' it on a necklace. So ye can admire me. Besides, it changes size, so it's best to wear it on a chain so I don't lose it."
"Lyn, it's fake," said Tom. "It's a cheap ring you got on a bookmark."
Lyn looked offended. "No it's not! This is the real Ring, the one that cost over a hundred dollars. My Precioussss! Gollum, gollum." She stuck her finger through the Ring and disappeared. "Hey, it really makes me invisible! Nanny nanny boo boo, you can't see me!" She pranced around the ship, poking people randomly. Then she snuck up behind Tearlach and yelled, "Boo!" Tearlach jumped. Next she snuck up in front of Jack and yelled, "Boo!" Jack didn't jump.
"I saw yer shadow, love," he explained.
Three pages. Better than the last chapter. An' this is without Tom's explanation. So maybe by the time I get me brother to do his explainin' thing, it'll be four pages. But I doubt it. I think I'll go add another song, then. Mesa likes songs. Yay! Four pages! Almost five. Much better. I should go add another song, just because I love songs. An' because Jack loves to hear Lyn's voice. Yippee! Five pages. Woot! Six pages now. Much much better. Mesa likes songs a lot. Now it's a good "Into the Vortex" chapter. No Elfcarii, though. But then, there were no random people appearing. I thought that was this chapter, but apparently not. Prolly chapter 6, 'cause that's where random people start appearin'.
A/N (4/29/05): I don't care what the ff.mort people say about song lyrics, I've taken out most of them, I'm leaving in the Rings poem because I like it, and Lyn was reciting it. Stupid, really. It's not like I'm claiming I wrote it, or getting money off of it.
