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."
The things he talks about, all that he's experienced, and it's painful. It's things that, truly, Kyle has taken advantage of all his life. None of those things were more than a day's planning away and many of them happened almost every day. That he hasn't known those things truly hurts.
"I feel like I should make sure you try all the foods you've missed. The ones I grew up on. My mom would be happy to know I was feeding them to someone that never happened. She taught me to make enchiladas and all, but I've usually just eaten carefully for my workout routine." He wonders how much of that is changing with a partner that gladly indulges in rich foods. He can afford to though. Kyle can't.
"Who... If you aren't time traveling into another time and place, whose body do they take over?" He fears he's traveling back into that those things that horrify him and yet he has to know.
"Trev, 0115, he's really taken to modern food. After I was shot, he stayed with me a couple of nights to make sure I was recovering okay, and he got us take away. I couldn't bring myself to eat the ground meat, what even if that? Meat doesn't grow in the ground, but he loves it. I didn't mind the milkshake. Cow's milk is weird, but I liked the malt shake. And fries! It's such a thing, like, I don't get why they're so delicious. What are enchiladas? What's in them?"
He looks away, because the answer isn't pretty. "During the initial trials? All volunteers. Everyone going and leaving and coming was a volunteer. People don't get sent to new bodies unless it's for time travel now. Or, there's a very small core of people who are asked to stay alive because they have the knowledge and skill to maintain the Director. But otherwise, it's just those of us going back."
Kyle smiles when he talks about food, trying to imagine not being raised in the world and privilege that he had been. "Well, you are a vegetarian right? Normally they're made with meat but they can be made with mushrooms and cheese... do you eat cheese?"
He's had so many forms of them that he can definitely accommodate it for someone that doesn't eat meat. Not that he eats all that much himself.
"And fries are amazing because they're fried. Fried food is the best," he says with a chuckle. "I don't eat them often but they're amazing."
"And this person that's lived that long? How did they manage that? If you don't want to talk about it though, you don't have to. I get nosy, I can't admit it."
"I haven't really been able to bring myself to eat meat. Not intentionally. I think there's been meat in a few things we've grabbed out on mission, when we just need to get food in us before we collapse." When they're all exhausted, except Trevor, who is so young in body and relishes every second of it.
"I can only really talk about Trevor, because I know him. He's been shifted into multiple bodies, because he was part of the consciousness transfer project from the start. People volunteered themselves. It's quite possible, I suppose, that my old body would be used for such." He isn't really worried about that. It might as well go to use. "And I eat cheese. Well, I've had cheese on things I've eaten."
"Here in this place, that's not a problem. Plenty of options for you. I can make enchiladas sometimes with no meat," he says, figuring he can work it out from what he remembers his mom showing him.
He visibly relaxes though when Philip talks about his own body being used before he got this one. "Oh well, that makes sense," he says, nodding slightly. "All the way around." And less creepy to him than choosing people to die for the existence of Trevor.
He's quiet a while, looking out at the water. "I'm glad you told me all of this. You didn't have to but I'm glad you did."
Volunteers and those about to die. The program is as ethical as it can be, all things considered.
"It felt only... right. Once I realised I could talk about it, I wanted you to know." He glances at Kyle and smiles slightly. "You should be kinder about your own body. Don't think I missed your comment about your diet."
"Yes, I have," Philip laughs. "But it's just a body. It will age. It will change. Enjoy it while it's healthy and strong. Don't just polish it up for others." He pats Kyle's arm. "Love it. Enjoy it."
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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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"I feel like I should make sure you try all the foods you've missed. The ones I grew up on. My mom would be happy to know I was feeding them to someone that never happened. She taught me to make enchiladas and all, but I've usually just eaten carefully for my workout routine." He wonders how much of that is changing with a partner that gladly indulges in rich foods. He can afford to though. Kyle can't.
"Who... If you aren't time traveling into another time and place, whose body do they take over?" He fears he's traveling back into that those things that horrify him and yet he has to know.
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He looks away, because the answer isn't pretty. "During the initial trials? All volunteers. Everyone going and leaving and coming was a volunteer. People don't get sent to new bodies unless it's for time travel now. Or, there's a very small core of people who are asked to stay alive because they have the knowledge and skill to maintain the Director. But otherwise, it's just those of us going back."
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He's had so many forms of them that he can definitely accommodate it for someone that doesn't eat meat. Not that he eats all that much himself.
"And fries are amazing because they're fried. Fried food is the best," he says with a chuckle. "I don't eat them often but they're amazing."
"And this person that's lived that long? How did they manage that? If you don't want to talk about it though, you don't have to. I get nosy, I can't admit it."
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"I can only really talk about Trevor, because I know him. He's been shifted into multiple bodies, because he was part of the consciousness transfer project from the start. People volunteered themselves. It's quite possible, I suppose, that my old body would be used for such." He isn't really worried about that. It might as well go to use. "And I eat cheese. Well, I've had cheese on things I've eaten."
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He visibly relaxes though when Philip talks about his own body being used before he got this one. "Oh well, that makes sense," he says, nodding slightly. "All the way around." And less creepy to him than choosing people to die for the existence of Trevor.
He's quiet a while, looking out at the water. "I'm glad you told me all of this. You didn't have to but I'm glad you did."
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"It felt only... right. Once I realised I could talk about it, I wanted you to know." He glances at Kyle and smiles slightly. "You should be kinder about your own body. Don't think I missed your comment about your diet."
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He's been there for Philip since the first days he arrived and he would continue to be.
He laughs though at that, patting his stomach. "Have you seen these abs? Do you think that doesn't come without hard works?"
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