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plutodeclassified · 20 days ago

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the city on the edge of forever: part 2 of rivers & gates

Magnus Bane is entirely unsure what to expect from callers at his front door at three-thirty in the morning, but certainly not four very familiar teenaged boys and a tiny creature in a strange sort of outfit, clutching a grey satchel and looking some mix of distressed and furious.

"What on earth is going on," Magnus asks, "and how much trouble did you get yourself into this time?"

"We, uh . . ." James rubs at the back of his head, further messing up his hair. "We may or may not have accidentally picked up a time traveler from the 21st Century, who may or may not be a Shadowhunter and also half faerie."

"Half faerie?" Magnus raises his eyebrows. "Wait. I shouldn't be asking questions, we don't want to change the future any more than it's likely already been changed. Are you alright? You're staring."

"Sorry," says the tiny creature. "I'm just not used to seeing people that exist in the 21st Century, who also exist back here in the past. I'm Pluto, by the way. Pluto Lochlyn Westhouse."

"Magnus Bane."

"I know."

"May I ask how you got to be named after the Roman god of death?"

"I chose it myself. And not after the Roman god of death—where I'm from, Pluto is a planet. Well, was a planet, but that's beside the point. I thought it sounded cool and edgy and dangerous. In my defense, I still do, and I was sixteen."

"So tell me what happened—how did you get here."

"See, that's the thing." Pluto sets down his bag and shrugs, gesturing helplessly. "I don't know. I bicycled through a Portal and I was supposed to be going back home but instead I wound up here. I thought maybe, because I'm doing research into some cryptid sightings that happened here . . . but you'd think then that'd've dropped me out in October in Iowa, and not, well, late August here. So yeah. Here we are. Asking you for help. Sorry if I seem kind of mad at you, I'm not, I'm just . . . well, this is not how I wanted to spend today. Well, I guess it's tonight, now. Damn time travel lag."

"Actually," says Magnus, "I'm more concerned about all the faerie magic clinging to you."

"I'm sorry." Pluto crosses his arms. "What?"

"You are completely covered in faerie magic residue. It's like somebody dumped a bucket of it on your head."

"That's descriptive," says Thomas.

"Faerie magic," says Pluto. "I did hear that correctly, yes?"

"Yes," says Magnus.

"So you're saying faeries brought me here?"

"That's what it looks like."

"But why? What good could I possibly be to them? Especially here? Why bring me all the way back a hundred and twenty years into the past to screw with me when they could've just screwed with me in my own era? And they probably could've done that in my own time period more effectively, too. I mean, if I'd walked dead on into one of the holler goblins' caves, I wouldn't put it past them to throw me somewhere to get me out of their hair, but I would never do such a thing, I don't want to risk getting myself killed, and other than that . . ."

"I don't know," says Magnus. "I really don't know. But it's clear you were brought here, on purpose, and almost certainly by means of faerie magic if not directly by a faerie. What's unclear is why. Do you think you could give me any answers, beyond that you've been studying goblins for the past two years?"

"Holler goblins. And now. Nobody asked me for help, I wasn't sent here on any kind of mission, I don't have any valuable knowledge or skills that could be used to change the past intentionally in any way. It'd be like putting your cat on a train to France. I've done nothing since I got here except drag the five of you away from your work, and get myself arrested for public indecency. And I wasn't even indecent, police officers in this century are just idiots. Actually, no, police officers are always idiots no matter what century you're in. I can confirm that. They're still idiots where I come from." Pluto grabs hold of the silver necklace circling his collarbone, pulling the tiny octagonal pendant back and forth across the chain. Clearly he's getting more and more agitated, and the more agitated he gets, the more talkative and aggressive he gets. Magnus files this away as important information.

"So is there a way to send me back?" Pluto asks. "Do you know?"

"We can try. I'm going to contact a friend of mine, Ragnor Fell—he's a fairly prominent figure, I'm sure you've heard of him—and we're going to see if we can find whatever Portal—or shockwaves left over from it—brought you here, and maybe we can reverse it and send you home."

"If Pluto's covered in faerie magic," says James, "we went to know whose, and how it got there. So we can stop this from happening again."

"Fair point," says Magnus. "I will look into that as well." He tilts his head toward Pluto. "Would if be alright if I offered to have you stay at my flat? I swear on the name of Lilith there will be no funny business. We should be monitoring you to make sure the magic activity doesn't produce any negative effects, and besides, this way I can keep you up to speed on the investigation faster."

"Anything so long as I don't have to eat boiled potatoes."

"If you want, you can cook for yourself. I'll go find somewhere to put a second bed. You four, unless you have other pressing business with me or with Pluto, get going, it's three thirty, none of us should be awake at this hour. Even Shadowhunters."

"I'd like to stay and talk to Pluto for a moment," says Christopher.

Everyone stares at him.

"Go ahead," Matthew says, after a very long moment of apparent shock. "Do you want us to wait for you?"

"I can find my way home." Christopher looks at Pluto. "Unless you want to kick me out."

"No, go ahead," says Pluto. "What do you want?

Once the other three Thieves have been all but thrown out of the house, Magnus goes to remodel the carriage house for Pluto to stay in, leaving him downstairs with Christopher.

"Tell me about this," says Christopher, gesturing at Pluto's laptop. "What's it called again?"

"It's a laptop computer," says Pluto. "A magical machine of wonders that I am not allowing any of you to take apart and put back together to figure out how it works because I can guarantee it's not going to turn back on afterwards, and I don't have Dash around to repair it, and this thing is very, very precious to me."

"I'll restrain any desires to take your computer apart. I just want to know what powers it." Christopher crouches down next to Pluto's armchair so he can get a better look. He's suddenly very close, almost level with Pluto's knees. They could just take his chin gently in their hands, and tilt it up . . . "It's not plugged into anything, but you said it wasn't really magic, either. Just, uh . . . what's the phrase you used again. On the walk here?"

"Clark's third law."

"Yes. That. Is it some kind of electricity?"

"It has a battery," says Pluto. "A rechargable lithium-ion battery. Have those been invented yet? Batteries? I'm afraid this kind of science isn't exactly my field of study."

"In Sweden," Christopher supplies. "Waldemar Jungner. Nickel-cadmium battery. 1898."

"Wow," says Pluto. "Consider me very impressed. I did not know that. Anyway. It has a battery, but it runs down very fast, so you have to charge it. It lasts about a day at best and that's if you're very gentle with it and I'm not very gentle with my computers at all. And I have not found a socket with three plugs in this house, and I do not trust the sockets in this time period anyway, so there is every chance it will die tomorrow, possibly permanently, unless I can either go home, or find a socket with three plugs, or get my hand on some pliers and a pair of hands strong enough to yank the third prong off my charge cable."

"Third prong," says Christopher. "What does this charge cable look like?"

Pluto isn't entirely sure what Christopher's planning, but she digs into her bag and retrieves the charge cable for the laptop. Christopher picks it up and studies both ends of it. "I think," he says, "that I might be able to make a socket for three prongs, but I need to know what the third prong does. It doesn't look anything like the other two."

"It's a grounding thing," says Pluto. "I think. So if there's a short or something it doesn't fry the computer's insides."

Christopher nods. "Okay. I can build that. I can't promise tomorrow, but I can certainly build such a thing. The problem is that I don't know what I have to work with. I may need to buy metals and rubber, and something for the socket, so I'll need clay or bone or some kind of wood that's not going to catch alight. That I am going to have to go shopping for. The laboratory has electricity, I can put the socket in there. You'll have to come to Grosvenor Square to charge the computer, of course, but it's the best I can do right now."

"Thank you," says Pluto. Christopher smiles at him, and Pluto suddenly finds himself without any other words to say. She just sits there for a long moment, holding one end of the charge cable. Eventually, she drops it, and Christopher gathers it up.

"You know," says Pluto, "it reminds me of that Star Trek episode. The City on the Edge of Forever. The one where Dr. McCoy goes mad and runs through a gateway to the past because he was high on something. He falls in love with some lady and ends up nearly causing us to lose a really important war." Pluto promptly collapsed into a fit of giggles, "Not that there's anything terribly funny about my situation but I think it's kind of stupid I can't find anything else right now to compare it to and if I don't laugh then I'll panic myself to death and I'd rather not have a heart attack at sixteen."

"That," says Magnus, returning to the parlor, "would be an exceptionally bad idea, none of us wants that. The only space available was in the attic, I hope that's alright. I do believe I've remodeled it nicely enough but I can't speak for what interior décor looks like in the twenty-first century." He turns an accusing look on Christopher. "What are you still doing here?"

"I was just about to start telling him about Star Trek's huge catalog of time and dimension travel episodes," says Pluto, "but it can wait, if you really want him to go. After all, it's your house."

"And so he just stands there," says Lucie, "and he's going for a handshake—it took me quite a while to recover from the shock, I'll tell you. He looked so odd. Just think, Daisy. A time traveler!"

Cordelia has no idea how to respond. She finds herself praying Lucie will just carry on as she does at times—she herself is too stunned and busy processing to carry on a conversation.

Fortunately, Lucie does just that. "And that's not the worst of it," she says. "Poor Christopher. I knew we had trouble the moment Pluto said he was a time traveler. He had the worst case of moon eyes I've ever seen on a man. I didn't think he did that, truly, but it sems I've been proven wrong. I feel so awful, because I'm almost certain he hasn't got a chance."

Cordelia raises her eyebrows. "Why not?"

"He seems far too focused on going home for that." Lucie sighs. "He's awfully good-looking, I bet he has someone back home he's missing. I can't imagine he wouldn't."

"Lucie," says Cordelia, "are you trying to tell me something?"

"Oh, no!" Lucie shakes her head emphatically. "He's awfully fascinating, but I—" she stops abruptly, an utterly terrified look on his face.

"But you are in love with someone else."

"Daisy, we shan't talk about that."

"Alright," says Cordelia, "but I am curious."

"Let's talk about something else then," says Lucie. Her face softens out of its excitement and she sighs. "How are you holding up, with the engagement and everything? I know it must be a lot."

"I will be alright," Cordelia says. "Mâmân has quit making that pitying, disapproving face of hers all the time, and Alastair has ceased giving voice to his desire to punch James, and James . . ." I am in love with James, and of everything that is what makes all this so hard. "James is a good man and a good friend. I think we will get along alright together."

Lucie smiles. "Well," she says, "Pluto's existence can't be hidden forever. That'll be a scandal when it comes out, and they'll forget about you and talk about him for a while. I hope he does fall in love with someone here. That'd be the talk of the Enclave and they might forget about you altogether."

Cordelia finds herself smiling. "I hope so," she says, "but I don't want anyone else getting ruined, either."

"Oh, I doubt Pluto would be the type to cause quite that kind of scandal." She leans forward, grinning, eyes manic with excitement. "So do you think Christopher has a chance after all? Or who do you see Pluto falling in love with?"

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plutodeclassified · 28 days ago

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rudolph fentz, the man from taured, and i: rivers & gates, pt 1

"As Einstein himself pointed out. He said we're like people in a boat without oars drifting along a winding river. Around us we see only the present. We can't see the past, back in the bends and curves behind us. But it's there." — Jack Finney, Time and Again

James Herondale can't believe he's doing this. This is the second or third time this week that he's found himself picking Matthew up from a mundane police station. He recieved a note passed on by an Irregular telling him that Matthew's been arrested, this time for getting drunk (as usual) and punching a mundane who'd called him a faggot (less usual, and James finds himself angry on Matthew's behalf). Nobody else is around to collect him, and Shadowhunters aren't supposed to get tangled up in the mundane legal system, so James has to go and get him home before he's stuck in a cell long enough for the policemen to realize something's off.

"You here to pick up the drunk or the girl?" the bailiff asks when James walks into the station rubbing his arms and hoping the persuasion runes on his wrists are working.

"You're taking both of us!" Matthew yells at him in Welsh from the station's cell. "I'm not going anywhere without the other man!"

"I'm sorry," says James, "what?"

"I made a friend here," Matthew continues, "and you're bailing him out, too!"

James says, "I'm taking both of them."

The bailiff gives him a weird sort of look, but he gets his keys and lets both people out of the cell—Matthew, and a very small, bespectacled young man about their age, carrying a grey canvas satchel. He looks a little odd to say the least, with his brimmed black cap and straight, thick short hair, which is a decidedly not-normal shade of mahogany red.

"Thanks," he says. "The absolute last say I wanted to end today was getting booked into a mundane police station for crossdressing and public indecency." He indicates his blue pullover shirt (printed with a gigantic yellow cartoon tabby attacking a city, and the word Catzilla) and black denim trousers with some dismay. "I'm not even indecent. Everything is covered." He turns to the bailiff. "Excuse me? Sir?"

The bailiff regards him with some concern. "Yes?"

"Uh, where's my bicycle? You impounded it when I got here, please tell me you've still got it."

The bailiff grumbles, rummages in his desk drawer, hands him a small ring of keys (his own, no doubt, from the look of them, not at all like any string of keys James has seen before), and points him to a barred window, against which he's locked a burgundy-colored bicycle of an unfamiliar style.

"Thank you." He flashes the bailif a grateful smile, unlocks the bicycle, and rolls it from the station onto the sidewalk outside, as if just expecting the two Shadowhunters to follow.

"Math," says James, "who is this? And why is it so dreadfully important that he come with us?"

"He's a Shadowhunter, Jamie," Matthew answers. "Like us."

"Well, sort of like you," he amends. "Not quit. I've got faerie blood on my mother's side." He puts down the kickstand on his bicycle so he can let go, turns around, and offers James a handshake, displaying the Voyance rune on the back of his left hand. "Pluto Lochlyn Westhouse. I'm a time traveler from the 21st Century."

For a moment, James just stands there, stunned. He doesn't accept Pluto's handshake. He says, "Prove it."

"Fine," says Matthew, "but let's do that back at the Devil, it's freezing out here."

The Devil Tavern. Second floor. Headquarters. The roof leaks. It's freezing. The time traveler James and Matthew brought back with them doesn't seem to care. He sinks into one of the room's self-dismantling armchairs and hugs his satchel to his chest as the Thieves disperse themselves around the room, settling into sofas and chairs. Christopher takes a seat next to him. He was here already with Thomas when the time traveler arrived, and the introductions were a mix of shock and awe from everyone.

The time traveler smells like salt and sage and cedar and something foreign he doesn't think exists in this decade. He looks at Christopher and gives him a tiny, weak sort of smile and promptly looks away again.

"So you're telling me," James says, "that you're from the year 2024."

He paces back and forth in front of the fireplace. Christopher can guess he's trying to think over the initial panic they're all steeped in, that worry of how is interacting with him going to mess up our future, and, the Inquisitor is going to have us all killed for this.

"Yes," says Pluto. "Around this time, too. The end of August, start of September." His voice is small with cold and distress.

James turns around. "And you said you got here by . . . Portal accident?"

"Yeah." Pluto's shoulders bend in a little. "My dad and I were traveling back from Taigh Liath, we'd just been up to visit my grandparents for the summer, and I stepped through the Portal and came out the outlet side in completely the wrong city, over a hundred years into the past."

"And I'm supposed to believe this because . . ."

"I don't think he's lying," says Christopher.

"You don't?" says James.

"No, look." Christopher holds out a hand to Pluto, who stares back at him with wary eyes the color of a storm coming in. "Could I have one of your boots? Please?"

Cautiously, Pluto unlaces one of his boots and removes it. The foot inside is small, encased in a thick, warm-looking black sock. Christopher wonders absently if the sock is wool, or some next-millennium fabric he's never heard of. He wonders what twenty-first century toes look like. Do they paint the nails, the way Pluto's fingernails are painted a dark, metallic shade of purple, near to black?

Christopher takes the boot, turns it over, frowns at it, sniffs it. There it is again, that odd, faint, bitter smell he's never encountered before: almost like the scent of rubber, but not quite. The fabric feels strange under his hands, and when he presses on the thick sole, it's indeed almost but not quite like rubber, and it yields ever so slightly if he really pushes. Pieces of it are a vivid shade of acid-dye purple. He hands the boot to James. "Have you ever seen material like that before?"

"No," says James, "I haven't."

"See?" says Christopher. "Just look at Pluto—half of what he's wearing doesn't exist yet. And I've never seen a bicycle quite like his before, either."

"It's electric," says Pluto. "Look, I can prove it further, but I want my boot back."

James passes the boot to Christopher, and Christopher passes it to Pluto. Pluto puts the boot back on, laces it up and double knots it, opens up their satchel, and removes a flat black slab with a dull surface and a shiny one. He presses a raised key on the side and half the inside lights up with a bright, witchlight-like glow, revealing a strange, cluttered image he can't properly process.

"It's called a tablet," Matthew says. "He showed it to me, too."

Christopher finds himself annoyed, though he can't say exactly why.

"What does it do?" James asks.

"Lots and lots of things," says Pluto. "It has an encyclopedia, a newspaper, a travel guide, a library . . . it calculates mathematics, publishes writing, plays movies and music, you can even use it to draw. All at the same time, even. Or, it did. In order to do half of that it needs something called a server, to connect it to a bunch of other computers—the connection is called the Internet, and without the internet it can't do quite as much. Oh, and the screen is touch sensitive. That's how you use it."

Christopher leans closer, wanting to pick up the strange machine and turn it over and inspect it. He wants, suddenly and without reason, to do the same to Pluto's hands.

When he first heard the words 'time traveler,' Christopher hadn't expected the future to look like a half-faerie with dyed bloodred hair. He hadn't expect to find himself as fascinated with Pluto's smile and his voice and the flutter of his long hands as with the materials that make up his strange synthetic clothes and the odd, unfamiliar technology he brings with him. For the first time, Christopher looks at someone and he wants to touch: to rub the material of Pluto's clothes between his fingers to see how it differs from the fabrics available to him here, to see how the dye changes the composition of his hair, to lay his hand to Pluto's cheek and see if 21st Century skin feels the same as his own does in his decade.

"So we need to think about how to get you home," James says, interrupting Christopher before he can ask to do any of those things, or start asking any more questions. "Unless you plan on staying here."

Pluto shakes his head. "If you'd asked me before I arrived here, I'd say yes, absolutely, I'm staying. But it's different when your dad's back home in your own time period, wondering where you are."

"I'm not going to send you to the Clave," James says. "I trust Charlotte and I trust my parents but I wouldn't trust Inquisitor Bridgestock with this situation and if the Clave gets involved, he's going to be involved. And I don't need him trying to lock anyone away in the Silent City for accidental timeline violations."

"Good," Pluto says. "I think you'll find I don't trust the Clave much either. So then who?"

"Well, Magnus Bane is in town. We'll start with him. He's friends with Ragnor Fell, who is an expert in dimensional magic. Between the two of them they should be able to find a way to send you back."

"One more thing," says Pluto. "I'm not sitting this out. I can and will do a Jim Rockford and go around you guys if I have to. I want you to tell me what all's going on, and if I have something to say, I want to be listened to."

"Why wouldn't we listen to you?" Christopher asks.

"Because I can't—because I'm from the future? Because sometimes my ideas are batshit crazy and they really don't work? Like . . . when I first got here, I assumed I had to have somehow done it myself."

"How would you Portal yourself into the past?" Thomas asks. "You're a Shadowhunter. You haven't got that kind of magic. That doesn't make any sense."

"Well, I'm half banshee, but even then . . . yeah, you're right, I don't have magic that could do that." Pluto takes a deep breath. "Okay. So there's this guy, he'd be about, I don't know, five years old right now, anyway, his name's Albert Einstein and he's a really important figure in mundane history—he's also a huge meme, but that's beside the point. Anyway, Einstein thought that time . . . time isn't so much directly linear as it is like a river, or a road. You and whatever wind and water and things are with you, you're going one way. And you can't look back and see the past behind you. But it's still there. It's not . . . gone. So then there's this other guy, his name's Jack Finney, and he wrote a book called Time and Again, where they try to use hypnotherapy to send someone into the past. I thought I must've accidentally done in real life what they did in fiction: I'm in the middle of some deep research into the Van Meter cryptid sightings, which took place in 1903, and I drove myself through a Portal into 1903."

"That sounds highly improbable," says Christopher. "You haven't considered, at all, the possibility that someone else brought you here? Perhaps on purpose?"

"I'm beginning to now," says Pluto. He sinks back into his chair and pulls his feet up onto the seat, hugging his knees to his chest. "I do think it's a bit too nice of a coincidence that the stranded accidental time traveler just so happens to end up in the exact same police station cell as another Shadowhunter—someone who could potentially help me. Speaking of which, I need to go change before I contract hypothermia or get myself arrested again."

"I can send for my sister," James offers. "She might have something we can borrow. I need to tell her I'll be home late anyway—I'll say we have a blood-soaked werewolf, she'll believe it."

"Thank you," says Pluto, unfolding himself from the chair, "but I've got clothes of my own. It gets cold in Scotland in the summer and that is where I was."

"I do have to go downstairs, still," James says, rising to his feet. "If you'd like anything?"

"I don't know. Maybe some hot broth?"

James smiles. "Hot broth it is." He steps out and shuts the door.

"I," says Matthew, "am going downstairs too, to get a drink. This is entirely too much excitement for me. Thomas, scientist, science fiction—good day." He stops in the doorway and offers them all a little bow before he shuts the door.

"Science fiction?" Pluto says, and bursts out laughing.

"Well," says Christopher, "technically you're science fact now."

Thomas bends forward in his chair, rubbing at his chin. "Are all people in the 21st Century like this? So . . . forceful?"

"Oh, no. We have all kinds of people in the 21st Century, loud and quiet, forceful and passive . . . that's part of why I have trouble wrapping my head around why I'm the one that was brought here, from that time. There are so many other Shadowhunters right now who would love to take my place. And most of them—most of them would be much, much better representatives of life in the future."

Christopher tilts his head. "I suppose you're not allowed to tell us anything about the future, then."

"I think it's reasonably safe to say things about the mundane future to you Shadowhunters, since you disconnect yourselves deliberately from it anyways, you're not involved in mundane politics, in their scandals and wars. But I can never, ever tell you about the Downworld's future. Ever. So don't you ever dare ask me about it." Pluto shakes her head. "Though, the mundane future . . . I suppose, if you had questions, I could give you little bits and pieces of information. Just not dates and times or anything. I can tell you about the research I've been doing, since that's not really about the future so much—they exist back here, too."

"Research?" asks James, stepping back into the room, with Matthew right behind him.

"I've spent the past year dedicated to an intensive study of holler goblins."

"Holler goblins," says James.

"Yeah. Cave-dwelling goblins. Kelly-Hopkinsville incident. I never received any proper Shadowhunter training so I've had time to learn more about and try to contact these goblins. We've made so much headway in Nephilim-Downworlder relations, it seems a shame we haven't made any meaningful connection with them yet. They're very reclusive but the legend is they're very powerful, and I think they may have interesting things to share. I met Dash because their research into potential uses for mundane ghost hunting equipment started overlapping with my anthropological study of the goblins."

"Into what now?" says Matthew.

The door bangs open. Lucie stands on the threshold. She walks into the room, stops dead, and glares accusingly at James. "You said you had a blood-soaked werewolf," she says. "That is definitely not a blood-soaked werewolf."

"I wasn't expecting you to follow me here," James says, wincing. "I was hoping to keep this under wraps."

"Keep what under wraps?" says Lucie. "James, who is this?"

Pluto gets to his feet and offers Lucie a handshake. "Hi. I'm Pluto Lochlyn Westhouse. I'm a time traveler from the 21st Century."

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