Philip actually goes slightly early and waits on the beach. He's rarely bothered by the SIN guards, because he wears his collar and keeps his head down, doing his best to vanish into the background.
He takes off his coat, setting it with his bag and then taking off his boots and socks to walk down to the water's edge. Even with his jeans rolled up, he's reluctant at first, standing on the wet sand and digging his toes into it.
Around the time that Kyle makes it, he's sticking out his foot and letting the waves wash over them, shrieking and laughing at the cold, at the tickle of it, only to move a little closer and run back to let it just wash over his toes.
Coming home, Kyle finds the house empty and it takes him a minute to check to make sure it's actually empty. It's less wanting privacy and more wanting to say hi. God, he never imagined himself like this. Not until he met Elijah.
The house though is empty and so he heads out to set up things on the table on the patio, too in love with his balcony not to take advantage of it. That's when he realizes he's not entirely alone, seeing Philip down by the water. Setting the bags on the table, he moves to the edge of the balcony, watching Philip play.
Philip gives up trying to understand the appeal of the running and shrieking (even though it still tickles) and decides that's probably a small child thing that he's too old to really get now.
Instead, he stands where the water can lap up over his toes, head tilted back and basking in the sunlight as the water slowly creeps up his feet with each gentle wave of the rising tide.
When he settles at the water's edge, Kyle moves to roll up the hem of his scrubs enough they're over his ankles so that they don't get wet and abandons his shoes on the deck. He heads down to the water's edge, enjoying the warmth of the sand on his feet as he comes to stand beside him.
"We looked at a lot of houses, and I had to have this one," he admits. "Just for this."
Philip hums, not lowering his head or opening his eyes.
"I'd never seen sunlight until I arrived in the twenty first century five months ago. Never seen living trees, or living animals. In the twenty fifth I come from, there's no life on the surface. I grew up in a Shelter, designed for ten thousand, housing twenty two in overcrowded conditions."
Whatever Kyle was expecting this conversation to be about, the discrepancies in some of the things that Philip said was not it. Yet here it is.
"This is why you'd never seen butterflies," he says softly, nodding. Turning to face Philip, his attention on him and not the setting sun. "You..." God, all of it is almost painful, even if he is suddenly madly in love with a thousand year old vampire. Yet he's seen proof that Elijah lived out those years. Philip though...
"That's all that's left of mankind? How did time tra..." He shakes his head. "Sorry. What do you want to tell me?"
Philip takes a slow breath, arms lifting and stretching and then exhales it out, opening his eyes and giving Kyle a small smile. "I'm Traveler 3326, I'm an Historian with the Traveler program from 2449. We're trying to change the past to make sure our world never happens. And if we weren't in this place, I'd never tell you a thing. But apparently, this place is outside time and space realities. I can't accidentally screw things up here."
He cracks his neck and digs his toes into the sand again. "There's three dozen Shelters or so, all overfilled, with the last surviving remnants of humanity. "There have been no new Shelters in my lifetime, the focus has been on the program."
So much of what he's seen and heard from Philip makes sense now. He'd wondered, not wanting to push and ask but now he's getting the story and it's both frightening and fascinating at the same time.
"Twenty four..." He shakes his head, just trying to fathom that. His life is being surrounded by those from times so far beyond his own. "Wow. Okay then."
He draws a breath, rubbing at the back of his neck, just trying to make sense of it and what all he's being told. "So less than a million people left? In the entire ... Was it war or the climate?" He shouldn't want to know but he feels he has to. How can he not ask. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to, okay?"
"Yes. And more." Philip wades out a little deeper, gasping at the water lapping up to kiss dry skin. "There was a meteor. It caused famines, shortages, nations went to war. The wars sped up the climate degradation, the meteor had already caused massive damage and a nuclear winter added to it. It was a lot of things. We'd managed to change the meteor impact, deflect it, which has undoubtedly changed events from my original timeline, but I haven't been updated on those changed yet. I was due for updating sometime in the next three months, probably."
He's talking about a time so long beyond Kyle's lifetime. Beyond his family given he likely won't ever have children and his line ends with him. Beyond probably even the pod squad's lifetime, and yet it's chilling to think about it. Not some possible amorphous future but a given with a year as a date.
Philip hums softly. "Well, you can't send matter through time. It just can't be done. But you can send energy through time, it's not under the same restraints of physics. There's the Director, it does all the calculations, work out who needs to go where and when and when needed or possible, a team is deployed. Sometimes select specialists are trained and sent for singular missions, or for select work. There's a team of doctors, D-Unit, who save lives that would otherwise be impossible to save. But most teams are like mine, five individuals sent back into chosen hosts at the moment of their death."
He turns to Kyle, spreading his arms. "This? Is Philip Pearson. I inherited his body when I arrived in the 21st, twelve seconds before he died of the heroin overdose he was about to give himself.
Half a year ago and Kyle would have assumed that Philip had suffered a psychotic break. Half a year ago and he would have worried for this sweet boy who had done too many drugs over the years.
That was before werewolves and hybrids and vampires and experiencing a thousand years in a single afternoon and everything else he's seen and done first hand in this world. In a place outside of time and space, as Philip had said.
"Why... what were you... Why were you there? Do you know?" And what wouldn't change now because he was there in Duplicity. Yet this is making Duplicity make more sense. This is how they brought them, how dead people stayed alive, and how they couldn't stay dead here.
"I'm an Historian. I was chosen as an infant and neurologically changed in very specific ways to make me a living, breathing encyclopedia. I have the majority of human history memorised, with a specialised focus on North America and my time and location, names, dates, deaths, numbers, events, places, all of it. Anything my team need to know, I have to know to tell them. I never had a name growing up, I was raised in the Traveler program.
"So, my job is to assist my team. But the team is a generalist unit, enacting specific actions as directed to to cause changes to the timeline, culminating in the deflection of the meteor Helios-685. We didn't expect to survive that mission, but we were saved by a technician who let us get to safe range." The others had farewelled loved ones as they walked out, expecting to die. Philip had just locked the garage and got in the van without a backward glance.
"You were..." He frowns at that, hating the idea instantly. Is this what would have become of a child like Michael in such a time? Hadn't it in a way where he was treated like trash and passed between one horrible foster parent and the next? It's not the same, and yet it bothers him to an uneasiness in his soul, sour in his stomach.
"What happens to your body then? In the future? If you had died trying to stop the meteor? I mean, I understand they're trying to save mankind but..." But it all sounds like madness and confusing and he's not sure what to make of any of it.
"Does that mean you saved mankind then?" Not saying what he's thinking. Before you came here. Because if he hadn't, what would happen then?
"I was selected for the program as an infant. I had the indicators that made me suitable for the process." Historians had certain things that were changed, making permanent changes to their memory retention and recollection, even when they left that brain behind.
"Oh." Philip gives a sad smile. "No, Kyle. It's a one way trip. We know that going into it. It's... a cut and paste procedure. Our bodies don't survive the transfer process. They experimented in ways to do it, but it's just not possible. Transfer to a new body is permanent. And the transfer back in time more so. I came into this body knowing I would live out whatever life I have left in it. And we don't know. We don't know when we've succeeded. What we're doing, it's never been about us. We're expendable."
Yeah, that horror is written all over his face. The happiness and joy he's been feeling for days now kind of dissolves as he thinks about this poor baby used for scientific experimentation.
"No! No. No nono." He shakes his head vehemently. "You are not expendable." Except he was and he already has been. He's been already used by them. "Ph... I..." He sighs, shoulders slumping. "I don't even know what you want to be called."
"Kyle." Philip reaches out to take his hand gently. "It's not like any of us have a future. Historian, participant, non-Travelers." He gives a small shrug. "Historians? We're well looked after, and yes, sometimes it was like being a lab experiment but sometimes... I felt like I was a superhuman. I was probably near thirty, if not older, when I was sent back. One of my team is over two hundred years old, he's outlived two generations of his family, but when he was sent back, his host is barely eighteen. Every human in those Shelters knows they are expendable, if it saves humanity and the Earth. In fact, if we succeed, we'll never be born."
Most of humanity worked to only two causes. Supporting what was left of humanity, or the Travelers program.
"Philip's fine. I spent a long time getting used to being called Philip, in preparation."
"That doesn't make experimenting on children okay. And it doesn't make what you've been through okay," he says, fighting to keep his tones even but he just can't. It's hard for him to face this for Philip's sake. Even if he's standing on a beach in Kink City where they've been kidnapped to.
"And what is the point of saving something if the cost is torturing children?" He shakes his head. "You don't have to answer that. I just... I'm an idealist who just learned fairy tales and soulmates are real, so ignore me," he says, sighing heavily. "You should go back to enjoying yourself. Though now I'm thinking of all the things you should experience, that aren't what your quota is about."
"It's not torture," Philip says. "We're altered, and it's an intense upbringing, but we're raised with care and devotion. The Director is incapable of cruelty. It can only work for the best outcome for the planet. The people in the program who raise the Historians are screened. They're all kind, just firm." They weren't parents but they were something like family. "And we're not trying to save something."
Philip sits down in the sand, stretching his legs out and into the water. "We're trying to save everything. We only have another couple of centuries at most before the whole planet will become completely uninhabitable. Even the Shelters wouldn't be able to withstand it, as the atmosphere is stripped away." He looks out at the water. "I would do it a thousand times over to change the past and stop it all ever happening."
Kyle finds that hard to believe, but that's the difference between his life and being raised in that life. Being raised from the time you were a baby and given no other choices, told there's a reason for this, and you don't see it as wrong.
But then Kyle hasn't faced the end of the world. Not that directly.
Despite being in his shrugs, Kyle moves to settle in the sand next to Philip, knowing he's so caught up in love, in happiness, that he briefly had that moment of forgetting that the rest of the world isn't like that.
"But you won't ever know," he whispers. He thinks about it. He would keep fighting too, every time. "So what will you do here then?"
"No. I won't ever know. Well, probably. We know changes have been made, things back in the future are different for the action we've taken, but with every change, the whole time line shifts and new problems are located. Things that were masked or couldn't happen with the original disaster."
Donner. His new traveler had said things were bad back home. But it seemed to be about something else, that something was going on.
He lets his head hang, stretching his neck. "I don't know. I was talking to someone, Vrenille, and he said some things that made me understand that this place is a pocket reality, outside of convention time and space. It has no impact on the timeline.
"I don't know what to do. I have a set of protocols for what to do, so I should fall back to Protocol Five, in the absence of direction, maintain my host's life, but I was never prepared for this. And I don't want to just maintain a life of addiction, which is why I was getting clean, but beyond that..." He feels lost. Very lost.
Kyle shifts slightly, watching Philip. Watching the body of Philip, possessed by a Traveler who is working hard to change the future and save all of mankind. Someone doing something noble, giving up his entire life, his entire possible life, to help others.
"I know I was ... angry with your life but the truth is? You're a strong man. You really are. Doing all you did for a world that keeps working hard to destroy itself."
Kyle considers that, watching him still. "Honestly? I'm glad getting clean is in your plans. All the time you were learning history, there's nothing you studied that you thought would be cool to experience? Nothing like that?"
Philip hums and sways, his piercings glinting in the light. "I've done so much more than I ever really thought I might. I saw sunlight. I've been on a beach. I've cuddled living animals. I've eaten fresh fruit and vegetables. Have you seen The Matrix? And on the ships, they have that goop that meets all their nutritional needs? That's what we have. It's mostly made from certain fungi and plants and some other stuff. I'd never seen a living plant, let alone trees, flowers, fruits."
There were things he wanted, but they were so easily fulfilled.
"I grew up knowing that if I was suitable, as an adult, I'd be sent back in a team. Some Historians aren't suitable, they go back and act as general control points, information, touchstones for the other Historians. But I was suitable. The really brave ones? Are the ones who did all this first. One of my team, 0115, he was involved in the first trials in human consciousness transfer. He had never gone back, he was an engineer and important to the studies on how people settle into new bodies, he and his wife. They lived out three life times together, before she died. Temporal aphasia. So he volunteered to go back, do some good in the past. Live a last lifetime somewhere with sunlight and fresh water and private rooms."
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Text > In person
He takes off his coat, setting it with his bag and then taking off his boots and socks to walk down to the water's edge. Even with his jeans rolled up, he's reluctant at first, standing on the wet sand and digging his toes into it.
Around the time that Kyle makes it, he's sticking out his foot and letting the waves wash over them, shrieking and laughing at the cold, at the tickle of it, only to move a little closer and run back to let it just wash over his toes.
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The house though is empty and so he heads out to set up things on the table on the patio, too in love with his balcony not to take advantage of it. That's when he realizes he's not entirely alone, seeing Philip down by the water. Setting the bags on the table, he moves to the edge of the balcony, watching Philip play.
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Instead, he stands where the water can lap up over his toes, head tilted back and basking in the sunlight as the water slowly creeps up his feet with each gentle wave of the rising tide.
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"We looked at a lot of houses, and I had to have this one," he admits. "Just for this."
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"I'd never seen sunlight until I arrived in the twenty first century five months ago. Never seen living trees, or living animals. In the twenty fifth I come from, there's no life on the surface. I grew up in a Shelter, designed for ten thousand, housing twenty two in overcrowded conditions."
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"This is why you'd never seen butterflies," he says softly, nodding. Turning to face Philip, his attention on him and not the setting sun. "You..." God, all of it is almost painful, even if he is suddenly madly in love with a thousand year old vampire. Yet he's seen proof that Elijah lived out those years. Philip though...
"That's all that's left of mankind? How did time tra..." He shakes his head. "Sorry. What do you want to tell me?"
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He cracks his neck and digs his toes into the sand again. "There's three dozen Shelters or so, all overfilled, with the last surviving remnants of humanity. "There have been no new Shelters in my lifetime, the focus has been on the program."
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"Twenty four..." He shakes his head, just trying to fathom that. His life is being surrounded by those from times so far beyond his own. "Wow. Okay then."
He draws a breath, rubbing at the back of his neck, just trying to make sense of it and what all he's being told. "So less than a million people left? In the entire ... Was it war or the climate?" He shouldn't want to know but he feels he has to. How can he not ask. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to, okay?"
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"How did they get you back to my time?"
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He turns to Kyle, spreading his arms. "This? Is Philip Pearson. I inherited his body when I arrived in the 21st, twelve seconds before he died of the heroin overdose he was about to give himself.
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That was before werewolves and hybrids and vampires and experiencing a thousand years in a single afternoon and everything else he's seen and done first hand in this world. In a place outside of time and space, as Philip had said.
"Why... what were you... Why were you there? Do you know?" And what wouldn't change now because he was there in Duplicity. Yet this is making Duplicity make more sense. This is how they brought them, how dead people stayed alive, and how they couldn't stay dead here.
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"So, my job is to assist my team. But the team is a generalist unit, enacting specific actions as directed to to cause changes to the timeline, culminating in the deflection of the meteor Helios-685. We didn't expect to survive that mission, but we were saved by a technician who let us get to safe range." The others had farewelled loved ones as they walked out, expecting to die. Philip had just locked the garage and got in the van without a backward glance.
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"What happens to your body then? In the future? If you had died trying to stop the meteor? I mean, I understand they're trying to save mankind but..." But it all sounds like madness and confusing and he's not sure what to make of any of it.
"Does that mean you saved mankind then?" Not saying what he's thinking. Before you came here. Because if he hadn't, what would happen then?
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"Oh." Philip gives a sad smile. "No, Kyle. It's a one way trip. We know that going into it. It's... a cut and paste procedure. Our bodies don't survive the transfer process. They experimented in ways to do it, but it's just not possible. Transfer to a new body is permanent. And the transfer back in time more so. I came into this body knowing I would live out whatever life I have left in it. And we don't know. We don't know when we've succeeded. What we're doing, it's never been about us. We're expendable."
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Yeah, that horror is written all over his face. The happiness and joy he's been feeling for days now kind of dissolves as he thinks about this poor baby used for scientific experimentation.
"No! No. No nono." He shakes his head vehemently. "You are not expendable." Except he was and he already has been. He's been already used by them. "Ph... I..." He sighs, shoulders slumping. "I don't even know what you want to be called."
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Most of humanity worked to only two causes. Supporting what was left of humanity, or the Travelers program.
"Philip's fine. I spent a long time getting used to being called Philip, in preparation."
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"And what is the point of saving something if the cost is torturing children?" He shakes his head. "You don't have to answer that. I just... I'm an idealist who just learned fairy tales and soulmates are real, so ignore me," he says, sighing heavily. "You should go back to enjoying yourself. Though now I'm thinking of all the things you should experience, that aren't what your quota is about."
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Philip sits down in the sand, stretching his legs out and into the water. "We're trying to save everything. We only have another couple of centuries at most before the whole planet will become completely uninhabitable. Even the Shelters wouldn't be able to withstand it, as the atmosphere is stripped away." He looks out at the water. "I would do it a thousand times over to change the past and stop it all ever happening."
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But then Kyle hasn't faced the end of the world. Not that directly.
Despite being in his shrugs, Kyle moves to settle in the sand next to Philip, knowing he's so caught up in love, in happiness, that he briefly had that moment of forgetting that the rest of the world isn't like that.
"But you won't ever know," he whispers. He thinks about it. He would keep fighting too, every time. "So what will you do here then?"
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Donner. His new traveler had said things were bad back home. But it seemed to be about something else, that something was going on.
He lets his head hang, stretching his neck. "I don't know. I was talking to someone, Vrenille, and he said some things that made me understand that this place is a pocket reality, outside of convention time and space. It has no impact on the timeline.
"I don't know what to do. I have a set of protocols for what to do, so I should fall back to Protocol Five, in the absence of direction, maintain my host's life, but I was never prepared for this. And I don't want to just maintain a life of addiction, which is why I was getting clean, but beyond that..." He feels lost. Very lost.
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"I know I was ... angry with your life but the truth is? You're a strong man. You really are. Doing all you did for a world that keeps working hard to destroy itself."
Kyle considers that, watching him still. "Honestly? I'm glad getting clean is in your plans. All the time you were learning history, there's nothing you studied that you thought would be cool to experience? Nothing like that?"
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There were things he wanted, but they were so easily fulfilled.
"I grew up knowing that if I was suitable, as an adult, I'd be sent back in a team. Some Historians aren't suitable, they go back and act as general control points, information, touchstones for the other Historians. But I was suitable. The really brave ones? Are the ones who did all this first. One of my team, 0115, he was involved in the first trials in human consciousness transfer. He had never gone back, he was an engineer and important to the studies on how people settle into new bodies, he and his wife. They lived out three life times together, before she died. Temporal aphasia. So he volunteered to go back, do some good in the past. Live a last lifetime somewhere with sunlight and fresh water and private rooms."
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