Corralling guests around the podium with a screen behind him, Samuels Argyle explains how he concluded that his museum would've become the next best thing.
The screen behind him changed, showing the roadmap that Samuels made and followed before completing his museum.
"True, a museum wouldn't normally fit the norms we've come to understand, but I felt as though there's an opportunity in every corner, just needed to know how to execute it. Why go to museums to learn history, to theme parks where you can pretend, you're in the moment, where here, you can live it!" Samuels put on more bravado than an announcer for a sport game, as he tells the guests that he wanted to have something that no one has, an interactive museum where guests can live the moments in time, where it didn't feel like a carny experience or a forced one.
Turning to his side, a hand outstretched, Samuels Argyle showed the guests how he means to give everyone an experience like no other.
There's a pause before someone materialized besides him, a pale faced person with no features.
Samuels Argyle explains that his museum's outfitted with top-of-the-line sensors, a sophisticated system that can produce accurate settings, people, things, you name it.
Each section of the museum's geared towards specific themes, like the history portion, where guests can relieve colonial times while experiencing events of the time.
A section where guests can explore and see the extinct animals of then, from mammoths to dinosaurs.
Oh yes, there's a section for every course of history that guests can experience as if it's real.
"This is an AI, created with work from our engineers, capable of rendering into any animal or person that it's programmed, observe," Samuels Argyle pointed at the pale faced, featureless, person next to him and it morphed into a Roman Centurion, fully detailed, almost no different than a regular person until Samuels Argyle poked his finger through the still Roman Centurion, before he commanded the Roman Centurion to talk and the AI did, not like a TCM movie with affluent actors, but speaking the period accurate Roman.
The guests erupted in excitement, more when Samuels Argyle had it turn into a lion, complete with a roar, loud enough to nearly deafen everyone in the room, and Samuels Argyle topped it off with the AI turning into a T-Rex.
Cue Lila grabbing Theodore's arm tightly as it brought back memories of the unpleasant adventure where she had her arms bitten to the nines by those damn compy bastards.
Holding her, Theodore sees the accurate T-Rex, complete with feathers, surprisingly enough, as it turned its massive head over the crowd before bellowing out a roar that rattled glasses and bones.
With a simple movement of his finger, Samuels Argyle sent the AI away, allowing the guests a moment's breath, before he discussed more about the museum, how he wanted it to reflect every period accurately.
"It's time to not read history, but live it!" Samuels Argyle stated his intent before opening the floor to questions.
Theodore opted to join in on the questions, asking how Samuels Argyle planned on ensuring the guests aren't harmed in this venture of his, which Samuels Argyle responded that the AI can't hurt them.
Turing Protocol.
"We spared no expense," Samuels Argyle summed how he managed to create a system where the AI won't hurt the guests and the guests cannot hurt themselves in the exhibits due to the safeties that the museum employed.
He did stress, however, that if anything were to happen, all guests have to do is shout the word "stop" and the simulation will end, they will be able to proceed as normal without issue, and the AI's programmed to understand all world languages and sign languages, that if anyone had issues, they can signal to the AI, and without further ado, help will be sent to their location.
Safety is Samuels Argyle's number one priority.
It led Lila in muttering under her breath, "Oh, where have I heard this before?"
Who knew Crichton got his inspiration from premonitions of events that hadn't happened in his world?
Samuels Argyle talked more before finally getting to the meat of why Theodore and Lila came to the museum in the first place.
With help from the waist staff, badges were given out to all the guests, as Samuels Argyle then told them how they're able to go wherever they wanted in the museum.
Leading the guests with his arms behind his back, Samuels Argyle took them to the hub where they'd choose which section of the museum they wanted to start with.
Aside from the usuals, Samuels Argyle opted to add a section to his museum: true crimes.
Guests would be able to relieve the crimes while learning how they became either solved or unsolved.
Samuels Argyle played it by the hilt, he wanted everyone a chance of having their golden ending, and he hoped it'd inspire some of the guests, as they go about the murders that have been recorded through history.
Of course, there's more sections coming to the museum, movies and television of the sections that Samuels Argyle wanted added to the museum sometime next year, but for now, he wanted to show the guests what the museum had right now.
He then went on to say that the sections all lead to the centre of the museum, where guests can either leave the museum, stay, and enjoy the other amenities offered, or take the escalators to try other sections.
With the length of the sections, guests would need breathers and time between to even make it through one-half of the sections.
Of course, Samuels Argyle couldn't go without saying that there's gift shops at the ready when the guests come out of their respected sections for them to peruse, see if there's anything they'd want as a memento.
He noted that it'll take a while for everyone to go through the sections, as they don't all end the same way, there's multiple ways the sections end, to keep things fresh for returning gusts.
Motioning with his hands, Samuels Argyle cheerfully said, "Now, without further ado, I wish you all a good time, and I will meet you at the end!"
With their badges, Theodore and Lila looked between the entrances of the sections, deciding what to start with first.
"Why not true crimes, seems the lesser of evils?" Lila shrugged as she turned towards Theodore as he remained undecided.
Given they had their fill of dinosaurs, ancient history, and so forth, Theodore opted to agree with Lila, saying that he can do the true crimes section, see what his noggin can shake out, while they're trying to figure out why they were invited here.
On standby, he ensured Al's ready for anything that may happen during their walk through the true crimes section of the museum.
Arms interlocked, the two walked with the crowd entering the section like a tunnel straight from Wonka's factory, complete with lights.
There's a brush of cold air that hit them as they walked out of the tunnel, finding themselves in…
"London?" Lila's chestnut eyes glistened in the street lamps, the smog hanging low in the streets, and she hears a horse carriage in the distant.
As he surveyed their bizarre surrounding, Theodore concluded that they're reliving the period of the infamous Jack the Ripper.
Curious, Lila asked if Theodore's father ever had a run-in with the serial killer, however, Theodore replied that his father never had the chance.
"Well, who do you think he was?" Lila opted to ask Theodore as they kept their arms interlocked while walking through a period correct Victorian London.
Pondering as he walked with her close to him, Theodore replied that he doesn't know, it could've been different people using the moniker for their nefarious purposes, as criminal investigations weren't intricate as they are now, with corruption in hand, a good criminal with a grudge could've easily used Jack the Ripper for their own use.
"Weren't his victims mostly women?" Lila remembered what she knew of the infamous serial killer that struck the London area centuries ago.
Nodding, Theodore affirmed Lila's response, before saying that for every daft criminal, there's one that knows how to utilize the time they're in to their advantage.
Women of ill repute weren't regarded well, wouldn't matter to the general population if they suffered by the hands of Jack the Ripper.
A perfect crime, it was, one that echoed throughout history to come, and likely never solved.
Maybe Theodore's right, there's people under the banner of Jack the Ripper who used the mania caused by their murders to strike against prostitutes, knowing that they're low rung in the eyes of the society they lived in, and the crimes virtually unsolvable because of the women's profession.
"Maybe it was an alien," Lila shrugged as she remembered how the Black Dahlia was murdered by an alien, but Theodore doubted it was anything that extreme.
Though, the days of theirs strange as it is, it's a tossup.
"As long as it wasn't one of those things that did it, I'm happy," Lila clung to Theodore as she remembered their experiences dealing with the bird thing.
Drekker, whatever it was called.
With health of then not as it was now, no doubt those women unknowingly had diseases that would attract those bird things' attention like moths to fire.
"I'm sure the answer to the enigma is something simple, Lee," Theodore comforted her as they walked through the empty streets of Victorian London, the cold air brushing against them as the night skies above were cloudy, hardly a star in them.
Their eyes moving, the two didn't see any other guest except themselves, guess others got Black Dahlia and other famous true crimes of recent period.
A little spooky for Lila's taste that they're the only people in this section of the museum that gotten Jack the Ripper, but she supposed that's what Samuels Argyle meant when he said guests would want to go through the sections over again.
Her body shot up with adrenaline when a sudden scream broke through the silence, before abruptly stopping, Lila grabbing Theodore's arm as he instinctively pulls her behind him, only when their minds caught up to them, did they proceed to venture further through the simulation.
Up ahead, there's two bobbies and at their feet, a dead woman wearing a period dress with her eyes open, her mouth gap, blood running down her throat as her ruby rose choker laid near her, cut in half by the blade that inevitably killed the woman.
Putting on his best face, Theodore approached the bobbies with Lila behind him as he asked the two what happened.
Not surprisingly, they attributed the murder to the work of Jack the Ripper, and Theodore went along with the simulation, asking them questions.
The bobbies went along Main Street when they heard the woman scream, came here to find her dead, no one else around except them and Theodore and Lila.
Looking at the woman's body, Theodore's icy blue eyes sees the coin purse under her shoulder, she tried to hit her assailant with it, but it proved ineffective.
Carefully, he takes the coin purse from under the body and checks it, wanting to see if it was a mugging gone wrong, but found no money been taken from the coin purse, approximately £118, by today's rates.
Lila helped him locate jewelry, a wedding ring on the woman's right hand, left alone, and a pearl earring missing from her left ear, torn from her earlobe by the look of it, but it wasn't intended.
"The killer tried to grab her from behind, reached to the left side of her head, but she turned, so he grabbed her ear, in the struggle, he tore out her pearl earring," Lila went through the motions in her head, how a bloodied pearl earring ended up towards the brick fence behind them.
She was standing on the corner of the road, likely waiting for someone, and someone she didn't expect tried to grab her from behind, but she struggled.
Stronger than her, her killer easily overtook her, sliced her throat, bled out in seconds, silenced her before anyone else became alarmed.
Enough time to make a run from it, but so far, they can't make out a motive.
Nothing on her person's been taken, the bobbies claimed hearing nothing except the scream, meaning there couldn't been an argument, making this killing a random crime.
None of the bobbies knew her, she wasn't anyone high on the upper echelon list, seemed to be a regular citizen that went out at the wrong time.
Didn't seem like she was a prostitute, there's no indicators showing this, but it wasn't like they'd wear six-inch plumes on their heads if they were.
"Intriguing," Theodore became invested in this simulation, wanting to see it through with the aid of Lila, as they processed the crime scene with the bobbies before making their way through, prepared to track down the woman's killer.