Early Days

O.U.ARCHIVE ENTRY I5STH

How can you be a time traveller and have no time?

This question always irritated our top-time-traveller Sylvester Wintercoat. He also had no patience for people calling him by his full name and preferred to be called Silver.

Wouldn't you?

You may recall from previous tales that Silver has affiliated himself with a magnificent group called Operation Universifix, whose files you are of course reading, and whose goal is to travel through time fixing all manner of mishaps that, for whatever reason, keep leading to the premature destruction of the universe.

This happens to be a tale from his early days there, shortly after the incident with the werewolves, as it is known.

Now, you'd think that, being a time traveller who needs a break, there would be all the time in the timeiverse to go away for a hundred years and come back after a nice holiday. Especially since Operation Pharmaceutifix has produced all sorts of potions for preventing aging and the other gotchas of time travel.

But it's not that simple.

You see, not anyone can become a time traveller. They have to go through just the right experiences - the right buildup - they have to get The Call at the precisely the right moment - it's awfully complicated to just extract a person from their environment and have them rather suddenly switch over to being a universe saving time traveller.

Part of that mindset inherently involves a sense of unease - a nervousness - a desire to leave your surroundings but still a desire to make things better.

Silver subtly senses this. He knows that part of him can never ask the question: "Why am I doing this?" - yet this is the very fear, the nervousness, the unease that allowed him to become a time traveller to begin with.

Oh, here comes his companion AV. And he's been drinking.

"Silver! Stop moping!"

Unlike Silver and his must-stay-focused brooding, AV appears to have been experimenting with some of the more obscure Potions.

"AV, what in the timeiverse have you been-"
"Time! There's no time - all the time traveling in history can't stop this fleeeeeting moment" -hiccup- "from fluttering away before I universifix your depressed ass."

Silver raised an eyebrow - not because AV appears to have changed personality completely, but because AV wasn't normally particularly in touch with others' feelings at all. In fact, it would be fair to say that AV had never in all their adventures really noticed one of Silver's moods - never mind tried to cheer him up, and never-never mind tried to outright fix one of his problems.

AV squinted and lowered his voice. "You're second guessing, aren't you?"

We're being hard on AV. He's an excellent companion and can get Silver out of any more conventional problem. Well, where "conventional" means time-zapping some armed vampires, or getting caught right in the middle of two colliding planets.

Silver, in an unusual moment of honesty, decided to humor this line of investigation.

"AV, you might be right - in fact-"

Out of nowhere, AV had fainted. There was a loud thud on the floor - something Silver was quite used to.

Eight seconds later, he was back on his feet. The potion had worn off.

"Silver…"

There was a long pause.

"…what was I saying?"

And that was the end of that.

Silver had just had an interesting experience. He certainly learned something about himself. Overall, he was sort of glad his healing didn't come from a potion-intoxicated AV at this particular moment. There are more pleasant heroes out there.

As AV quite rightly put, the moment was fleeting - there are no smooth time- coordinates that we at Operation Universifix can jump to that are anywhere near the moment itself.

We can only speculate, but we believe AV was going to advise his friend "You need to find a nice girl." This is backed up by the fact that later on, he did indeed find one. And that subsequently, all signs of this unease and woe he was experiencing vanished entirely.

She was really something. But that is another story.

O.U.ARCHIVE ENTRY.END