Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?

[ourselvesalone]

Here it is. Everything.

His own words come back to haunt Victor when he closes the door to his workshop behind him, his subject's body cooling in the bath of ice that will be her new home until he can harvest healthier parts to replace the diseased and decayed ones that plagued her in life, ones that he knows intimately well from his past. When he lifts his eyes to search his rough and abused quarters, he finds himself struck by the impossible. Though morphine is in his blood, it merely dulls the pain and not the awareness. Still, by all accounts, he has managed to find himself in the approximation of Sir Malcolm's library.

Chilled, he thinks of the weeks he had spent in this library, trapped while a demon held them hostage upstairs and another demon lurked outside his door. It takes Victor only a brief moment to realise that this is not Malcolm's home and Victor has found himself transported as if on the wings of some temporal being into a place of such wonder and such advancement that he can hardly say.

The lights, the lights, they burn with electricity unlike any he has ever seen and he wonders if this is how Proteus felt, if this is how his creations looked upon the world with such wonder, at seeing things for the first time and discovering in them the newness and potential of being.

"Fairy lights," he echoes to himself with bitter remorse, reaching out towards their luminescent glow before he retracts his fingers tight to his chest and thinks of all the heartbreak and the happiness that Proteus had not experienced because of his past sins and shames and mistakes.

Swallowing back that regret, Victor turns towards the door to summon forth courage of being, knowing there must be more to this world than a mere echo of a library he has come to know so intimately and with such despair. Still he searches each crevasse and corner, beholding wonders hidden in plain sight that he cannot rightly account for. Eventually, he strays far enough until he finds himself gaping upwards at the most wondrous chandelier powered by such electricity that he could power his laboratory a dozen times over with the power it seemingly contains.

"Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile," he murmurs Shakespeare's words to himself as he cranes his neck and turns his gaze upward, having already decided he must learn everything of this strange world that lurks behind the door of his laboratory. He very stubbornly does not think of the lines that come next.

Comments

[thebitchfelloff]

At his left, Cameron sits tucked right up against the wall of one of the alcoves lining the span of the lobby, perched on the back of an overstuffed leather sofa, combat boots unabashedly planted on the seat cushions. Hunched over her new cellular phone, she glances up, the cool glow of the screen lighting pale green eyes half-hidden behind her platinum fringe.

This guy, he looks more at home with the paneled walls and antiques than anyone she's seen yet, but he's got such an expression of wonder on his face that he can't have been here before. It's probably the only thing they two have in common, that look of shock and awe. She'd been wearing it three days ago, the first time she'd found herself here.

"Hey," she calls with a jerk of her chin his way. "What year are you from?"

[ourselvesalone]

Victor's first glance renders little in the way of information. His eyes skim over her briefly, drawn back to the light, but his visual receptors pick up on more cues than he can process a moment later as he affords a double-take, eyes flickering over her form as the shocked awe manages to lose the awe and wallow in mere shock. She's certainly not one of London's girls, not even by the port. Not even in the darkest alleyways.

She looks almost like she belongs in the theatre, in the Tempest and Victor thinks wryly that this is a sprite, like Ariel, come to meet him after a storm has left him without a compass. "1891," is his automatic response, his gaze now successfully torn from the light, though he gestures to it loosely with one finger. "That, up there. I haven't seen electrical currents burn that brightly outside of one disastrous experiment," he says, thinking that in this case, at least it had not been his own. "What sort of conduction materials does it use, I wonder," he says, addressing the room more than his spirit acquaintance.

[thebitchfelloff]

"Uh… copper, probably," Cameron answers, still hunched but following the drift of the guy's gaze with keen and critical eyes. "Sometimes aluminum or an alloy, but usually copper. I don't think the materials have changed that much, just the amount of power that can push through them."

In theory, she should know this. She's not that long out of school, and history of science had been required for her major. She just hadn't much cared how the hardware worked, only that it did.

In retrospect, what with the whole vacuum cleaner meltdown incident, she probably should rethink that stance.

"You just got here," she says.

[ourselvesalone]

"Yes, sharp eyes, those," is Victor's wry response, given that he's certain to look out of time and place, what with his fascination with the lighting fixtures in a new place and his general aura, which he's sure has displaced him quite thoroughly. He's still more caught on the lights than his new companion and is sure it shows. The trouble is, he's spent so long amongst the dead that he often forgets how to treat the living.

More power, it was always part of his intention, but short of lightning storms, he hadn't the faintest how to do it. "You're not from a time I can put a name to, and if you are, then it's certainly not a world I'm accustomed to." Though, he's beginning to see the lines of his worlds blurred, that odd demimonde creeping out from the shadows. "Do I dare ask where we are? Or will I regret a question like that?"

[thebitchfelloff]

"I'm from 1983," Cameron replied as she stood upright on the sofa cushions and then hopped to the floor. Head tilted, she afforded the guy a considering once-over. "It's possible that we're from different worlds, that's a thing this place does apparently, but since you're enraptured by lighting, I'm thinking that 1983 is going to seem like another world regardless."

With a final glance at the screen, she shoved her phone into the back pocket of her pants and then made a sweeping, game show hostess gesture toward the room around them.

"You're in the Nexus Hotel. It defies all logic, so I don't know, a dude like you might regret asking, yeah."

[ourselvesalone]

Victor's ensuing laugh is rather rough as he thinks of all the things that have defied logic in recent days. His head turns sharply to the side in a curious tic he has, the one that remarks upon his ability to process the lack of logic far better in recent days than ever before. Then again, in recent days he has been asked to believe that a demon can take up residence within a woman's soul and were it not for the physical proof, he might have yet remained a doubting saint.

"My mind is open," he assures the woman. "While I cannot lie and would never turn away from science and logic, I'm also a man who enjoys poetry and the old Romantics. The turn of phrase and the world of metaphors is not curious to me, nor that of the demimonde, a world I only half know."

[thebitchfelloff]

"I… have no idea what any of that means," Cameron said, managing to make the admission sound as if she weren't the one deficient between the two of them. She had all due respect for history—Ada Lovelace was one of her idols—but she recognized and then accepted almost instantaneously that she had little patience for whatever flowery bullshit language came along with being from 1891.

"But it's good that you've got an open mind," she continued. "It's going to be blown. A lot." Particularly if the lighting alone could amaze him so much.

"So, what's your name?"

[ourselvesalone]

"Victor Frankenstein," he introduces himself with a rather off-hand tone, given that his attention is currently cycling through the various numbers of uses that this new modern wiring might have if he were able to procure some for his lab. He thinks even his Creature would not fault him for lingering so long if it meant expediting his work.

He turns to her, though, a bit struck by the turn of phrase, sifting through it and coming up with her meaning. "And if you were to describe the future, this mind-blowing time, so to speak, how would you summarize it to me?"

[thebitchfelloff]

Eyebrows skeptically arched, Cameron scoffed. "Yeah, okay," she replied, shifting her weight back onto her heels as she regarded him from feet upwards in an attempt to ascertain if there was any truth to his claim. They'd told her when she arrived that meeting fictional figures was a possibility, but she remained unconvinced. This guy did not look like a medical genius; he looked like he needed a shower and a minimum of 16 hours of sleep.

"We know more. A lot more. And care less about stupid shit," she answered. "That sum it up well enough for you?"

[ourselvesalone]

"It depends upon your definition of what is, by your accounts, stupid," Victor challenges, given that he has his own held beliefs as to what is and what isn't valuable, but he only allows for such opinions to be shared when pushed, enough. "For instance, the stupid shit, as you so call it, to me would be the less than valuable search for scientific pursuit less than the most pursued, most determined, most glorious of all things -- the veil that pierces life and death and the discovery of such things beyond it."

[thebitchfelloff]

Cameron reared her head slowly back, incredulous. "Wow, dude, you're really committed," she replied, and then frowned. "Not sure I agree that we should chuck all other science out the window, but congrats on that."

What if, though... What if this guy legitimately was Dr. Frankenstein? How could she even tell, in a place like this? He could just be really committed to his crazy ...just like Frankenstein was.

No. There was just no way.

"Anyway, there's a pretty big library that way," Cameron continued with a vague motion toward the gallery corridor. "I wouldn't be surprised if there are modern medical texts in there. Might want to check in and get a room before you start grave robbing, though." She flicked an index finger toward the front desk.

[ourselvesalone]

His brow furrows with confusion and he wonders if perhaps this isn't a causal effect of sliding between past and future with ease, not understanding the people around him as precisely as he'd wish to. "I don't think it should be thrown out, but I also disbelief that it should be given the weight of importance," he says, slightly irritable to think that all science should stop.

Certainly not. However, those scientists and explorers should find themselves accustomed to being inferior. He gives her a startled look, as if he would do such a thing (as if she could know of such a thing) and finds himself yet wary. "I assure you, once I find the texts, they will be the first thing I read." He tries to shake off her comment, but finds it difficult. "And I would hardly steal from a grave, that's devilish behaviour."

No, his subjects come to him on stark tables.

[thebitchfelloff]

"Is it," Cameron replied, the words soft and drawn out, caught somewhere between question and sardonic statement. Her skeptically arched eyebrows said as much as her voice, but she made no further comment on Frankenstein's current or possible future proclivities. The guy had enough to deal with without being confronted with his status as either fictional character or delusional wannabe.

"Seriously, though," she began again, and pointed more clearly toward the front desk. "You'll want to check in. I know it's kind of weird–Like, are they trying to track us or what? But the rooms are free, they can answer pretty much all your questions, and so far nobody's screwed with me. They've got little fliers about trans-dimensional safety and everything, it's crazy."

[ourselvesalone]

Victor takes the information in as though he's collecting rainwater. He's cautious and careful about it, not wanting to get too deep into a situation he's not accustomed to, having had a great deal of experience already with the consequences of such a thing. "Is there a guest book somewhere that they require me to sign?"

"Perhaps a place where they expect compensation?"

[thebitchfelloff]

"I didn't sign anything," Cameron answered with a dubiously flicked glance toward the crisply efficient figures behind the front desk. "They just knew who I was. Which was weird, but when you've just hopped across time and space, I guess everything is relative." At the time she'd been so overwhelmed, it hadn't occurred to her that the check-in process was odd.

"And everything's free. Well," she reconsidered with a tilt of her head to one side, "almost everything. Your room is free, and the buffet is free. You have to pay for drinks and cigarettes."

[ourselvesalone]

Alcohol does seem a lovely beacon in a world filled with infuriating confusion and madness. Victor glances towards the desk and the strange fibrous clothing the people wear, wondering if he ought to trust what's before him for what it appears to be. He supposes he also doesn't have many options, currently. "What would happen to be the going rate for a drink, then?" he wonders. "In a place like this?"

[thebitchfelloff]

"Same rate as wherever you came from," Cameron replied, and then shook her head, reconsidering. "Okay, technically it's not the same rate because it's inflated, but your money is worth more here, so it's effectively the same rate."

When she'd discovered this little quirk, it had immediately become her favorite aspect of the hotel. It was as if they were all programs, and stepping through a door prompted an algorithm that affected their known value so that no one was left with an advantage.

"Seriously," she continued, and motioned Frankenstein's way. "Check your wallet."

[ourselvesalone]

Victor pulls out his billfold to inspect it, having had precious few coins before and now he draws out strange dollars he doesn't recognize, coins having become paper, though it's still a pitiful sum, totally less than five pounds all together. "Still poor," Victor remarks, given that his money is either funnelled to his experiments, his morphine, or to his rent.

Even Malcolm Murray cannot fund him enough for all his hobbies.