Chương 210: Book Five, Chapter 113: The Guided Tour

🔴 REC SEP 24, 2018 09: 02: 38 [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%]"It's time to see what it's like on the other side of the museum industry," I said as we walked into the building right next to Town Hall. This museum had an exhibit on the very meteor that struck Carousel nearly 300 years prior. We were going to try to learn everything about it that we could. It was just Bobby, Kimberly, Logan, and me. Antoine volunteered to stay with Anna to help keep her safe. What kind of research would we actually find in the museum?

If the meteor fragments that had been turned into the amulet truly had time-travel properties, I doubted they would have a placard that said so. Still, we made our way directly to the exhibit on the meteor. It was the largest and most impressive exhibit there. In fact, the area covering the meteor looked suspiciously like a planetarium, as if some all-powerful entity had just copy-pasted one into this building. Up above us, a colorful sculpture of the meteor could be seen. We did a guided tour.

A petite, blonde tour guide nearby named Ashley gave us a good overview:"Welcome to our exhibit on the Carousel River Valley Meteor. This extraordinary meteor struck the center of the Carousel Settlement in 1743, destroying everything man-made within a ten-mile radius. What it left behind was a collection of fragments unlike anything ever seen. The largest piece was roughly the size of a small car, while smaller shards were scattered throughout the area.

Even the soil here still carries traces of the meteor's particulates. If you'd like to see what these fragments looked like, we've prepared detailed recreations in the next exhibit room. You'll find a life-sized model of the largest fragment, along with smaller shard replicas and a display showing how the blast spread material into the surrounding area. It's a fascinating glimpse into one of history's most destructive events. Follow me, and let's take a closer look!"

Before the tour guide could move to the other room, Logan said, "Excuse me, but I was wondering if you knew where the actual pieces of the meteorite are?" Ashley looked at him and blushed.

"If you'll look at the back of the tour group, you'll see Dr. Logan Maize, one of the museum system's most decorated historians—and a bit of a troublemaker." Logan waved, not quite expecting that reaction.

"The real fragments are kept in a lab underneath the museum for testing and safekeeping," Ashley said to the group before leading the group into the next room. Logan's character should have had some idea where the originals were, but he couldn't find that information. He just had to bite the bullet and ask. He was a good actor and managed to play it off as if he had been flirting with her.

We continued to mill about the museum, looking for any exhibit or sign that might explain more about the meteor or its strange properties, but we didn't find any. All the information we had was very surface-level. Luckily, we were employees of the museum system. We found the entrance to the Employees Only section and easily made our way inside by flashing our badges.

We might not have been employees of that museum, but it was all one large organization funded by the same benefactor in conjunction with the Carousel city government. Unfortunately, the employee section wasn't much more helpful. There was no display case with all the real fragments of the meteorite just sitting around waiting for us to stare at them. There wasn't an advanced section revealing all the true information about the meteorite. There was a cafeteria, though—one specifically for the employees.

We sat at one of the tables, and we all leaned in so Logan could whisper to us.

"According to the museum database, the actual meteorite is on loan—or at least that's the designation it was given. I can't figure out where it was lent. However, I do happen to know the guy who was in charge of researching it. He still works here," Logan said. All of this information was what we could find in the database for the museum system. But since Logan's character was supposed to be the major historian, we thought he should be the one to relay it. So we waited in the cafeteria. It took 30 minutes.

"There he is," Logan said.

"He always stops to get a cup of coffee—I doubt that's changed. Although, if memory serves, his idea of coffee is mostly milk and sugar." He was ad-libbing, using information he had gathered from different places and wielding it to create a useful narrative. He knew the name of the guy from the database, and his character had received a birthday email from someone with that same name. I followed his eyeline with the camera to show a short, bald man with thick glasses and a cheerful face.

Logan held up a hand and said, "Roger." The man turned and saw Logan, a smile growing on his face.

"Logan!" the man said cheerfully as he walked over, shifting his briefcase from one hand to the other to extend a handshake.

"I heard you got put in the jailhouse."

"On account of my rough and tumble past, I'm sure," Logan said as he shook the man's hand. The two men laughed.

"So, what are you doing here?" Roger asked.

"Believe it or not, I'm actually here to see you."

"Me?" Roger asked.

"What do you need to see me for? I told you that poker game was not for real money." Logan laughed.

"We're doing an exhibit on the Carousel River Valley meteor strike, and I seem to recall you being the foremost expert on the entire thing." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Roger smiled.

"The only people who know more about it than me are the ones who got crushed by it," he joked. We all laughed—lot of laughing in this horror film.

"Say, what exactly does the Crime Museum need an exhibit on the meteor for?" Roger asked. The gig was up. We could come up with some excuse—after all, the jailhouse was built on the cornerstone of the original jailhouse wiped out by the blast—but that was a tenuous connection. Logan was about to relay that reasoning when, luckily, Roger spoke again.

"Oh, you must be talking about Grant Leitner." Logan, taking the lifeline, said, "Exactly."

"Well, I'm sure I could rustle up some info. You know, we used to have an exhibit out here in the main museum, but then somebody upstairs realized it was a bad idea to advertise one of the biggest museum thefts in the history of Carousel," Roger said. More laughing. Roger checked his watch and said, "Well, I can look in my files and shoot you over anything I find."

"That would be great," Logan said.

"Another thing: when I was looking into this, the database said we don't actually have the meteorite fragments anymore. Don't tell me we sold them." A sour look appeared on Roger's face.

"Don't get me started on that whole mess," he said.

"I worked on that meteor for 14 years, and then we loaned it out. Turned out this other group had some fragments of it themselves, and suddenly they needed every piece for their research. I still get burnt up just thinking about it. All I've got left to study is dust."

"That's how it is, isn't it?" Logan said.

"The guy with the checkbook gets to control our history and our science."

"Damn right," Roger said.

"And that is so frustrating because the implications of my findings were monumental." Finally on a topic he was passionate about, Roger sat down next to us. After a brief greeting, he launched into a diatribe about the things he'd discovered about the meteorite and its unique properties. He gave anecdotes about his experiments and day-to-day projects in the lab.

"Put it to me straight," Logan said.

"What is special about this meteorite?" Roger scratched his chin and said:"We conducted extensive tests to determine the elemental composition of the fragments—everything from spectrometry to crystallographic analysis. While all the fragments are made of the same base material, each one exhibits slight, measurable variations in its quantum resonance profile and isotopic decay rate.

"These differences are so consistent, yet distinct, that they caught the attention of Kinetic Research Systems Laboratories back in the '70s. They've been requisitioning more and more pieces of the damn thing ever since.

"I was studying the material for a groundbreaking project: developing a clock that could theoretically function with absolute precision, unaffected by phenomena like time dilation or relativistic distortions. I imagine that's what the KRSL science monkeys are doing now. They even got my notes. The unique properties of the fragments—their isochronous decay patterns and resistance to external temporal fluctuations—make them an ideal candidate for such a device.

"If the material lives up to its potential, it wouldn't just keep time—it would redefine it. Imagine a chronometer so stable it could remain synchronized across any condition in the known universe, perhaps even anchoring itself to some universal constant we've yet to discover. That's the level of precision we're looking at here. We left physics behind and entered quantum physics." It had been a while since we had seen proper science babble.

"And they're not going to credit you, are they?" Logan asked.

"They aren't going to have a choice," Roger said.

"Once I'm through with my research on this dust, I'm going to publish. They like to keep their experiments all secret. My principles are different—I think this knowledge belongs to everyone." The conversation wound down after a few minutes, and Roger asked if we were going to release the recording. I assured him we wouldn't release the footage until after he published. Roger, as an NPC, was quite a good actor and summoned a passion for his diatribe rarely seen in Carousel.

We got what we came for, though we didn't exactly know what that was. ■ STOP Off-Screen. Roger's email had already arrived by the time we got back to the jailhouse. It contained an article about a theft from the museum over fifty years prior.

JANITOR SHOOTS OFFICER, VANISHES AFTER STEALING METEORITE NECKLACE July 15, 1964 Grant Leitner, a 21-year-old janitor at the Carousel Central Museum, is on the run after allegedly stealing the Starlight Pendant, a necklace crafted from the famed Carousel Meteorite, and shooting a police officer who attempted to apprehend him. The theft occurred late Friday night when Leitner was caught removing the ruby-like pendant, known for its metallic streaks and extraordinary craftsmanship, from its display case.

Authorities quickly responded, cornering Leitner within the museum's memorial to the Carousel Valley Quake of 1947. Despite being surrounded, Leitner managed to elude capture. Before escaping, Leitner shot and injured Officer Michael Grady, who is now recovering in stable condition, though there is uncertainty about whether he will regain the use of his legs.

"It's a miracle no one else was harmed," said Police Chief Frank Callahan.

"We are dedicating every resource to finding Leitner and recovering the stolen artifact." The Starlight Pendant has been a centerpiece of the museum's collection for decades.

"It's irreplaceable, both in its history and its beauty," said curator Nevin Marks. Despite extensive searches, Leitner's whereabouts remain unknown, leaving the community shaken and the museum mourning the loss of one of its most prized possessions. The article came with two pictures. The first was a high school graduation photo of Grant Leitner.

"That's our guy," Logan said as we looked at the picture. Sure enough, the high school student in the photo was the spitting image of the man we had seen reflected in the window in one of the videos. Anna said the red wallpaper called him Generation Killer. The other photo was of the Starlight Pendant.

"That's not it," Kimberly said.

"Anna, come here. Look at this—let me see that necklace." Anna handed her the necklace with its ruby-red jewel on the end. Sure enough, the necklaces didn't match. Even the size of the meteor fragment looked off.

"What gives?" Kimberly asked. With sudden inspiration, I ran back to my desk and opened up footage I had taken of the daylight dance disaster. I started scanning through it. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before—or maybe it hadn't been there before.

"Look at this," I said. The others came over, and I played the video for them slowly, showing the moments right before the stage collapsed and then those right after.

"See?" I said.

"There he is." Sure enough, there was another copy of Grant Leitner walking up the steps from the stage. He was also still there filming a few meters away.

"No, he's over there," Antoine said, pointing to a different part of the screen. And sure enough, another man was wearing the same overcoat and the same hat, walking in a different direction away from the stage. I couldn't attest to whether it was actually him, but it was certainly a similar outfit.

"They're here," Kimberly said.

"They came here. We have a fight on the way."

"That's probably why they filmed these disasters," I said.

"That's why they need these tapes—because it allows them to see who's in what time period at any given time. The tapes will change when people travel there. Not that they could really tell which of them was there."

"Well, Cassie said they were being chased," Bobby said. She had. We scanned through the footage for another 10 minutes and managed to find two other images of what we thought was Grant Leitner AKA Generation Killer. Finally, I found the type of image I was looking for—one where he was very close, and I could get a good shot of him.

"This is exactly what I was hoping to find," I said.

"Look at this—look at his hand." I zoomed in on the computer as much as it would go. Sure enough, on his left hand, he had a ring with a ruby-red jewel on the end. I smiled and turned to the others.

"That's the ticket," I said.

"I just figured it out."

"Figured what out?" Anna asked.

"I may be a bit closer to understanding what Camden meant when he said no paradoxes." Before I could even explain to them what I meant by that, we received troubling news. Logan, on a hunch, had retrieved the newspaper Anna had brought from the future.

"It changed," he said. He turned it around to show us. The paper was from the next day. Crime Museum Staff Slaughtered, Others Missing A shock went through my system. Somehow, in unfolding the rules of time travel and trying to understand the premise of this story, I had forgotten the simple fact that this was a torture-and-murder storyline. I remembered now.

"We have to get this on film," Anna said.

"This article says we only have about 12 hours. And I promise—you cannot run from him. Not the normal way."

"Soooo… time travel?" Bobby asked. Anna nodded. We all looked at each other, and I said, "Great Scott." First blood was upon us. In fact, it may have already happened.