Dry your eyes
Each day you're alone
Is one fewer to wait
Till your lover comes home...
Theorising that a Constable could travel within her own transfictionally-algorithmised vitallic field, Feamintë Fioncarnë stepped into the Phantasmic Leap Accelerator... and vanished. She awoke to find herself trapped in the Fictional Realms, facing mirror images that were not her own, and driven by an unknown force to change the plot for the better. And so Feamintë finds herself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that her next leap will be the leap... home.
~
Nodding a greeting to Doctor Creator d'Article, Constable Penelope Ironwrought placed her cup of strengthening tea carefully on its stand, took a deep breath, and entered the Photonic Impenetrability Chamber. Almost immediately (a mere five minutes later) the gleaming brass of the walls faded away, to be replaced by a vision of a smog-filled street, fully realised, yet intangible. A man stood, eyes half closed, against the grimy brick wall of a house, cane in his hand. Penelope coughed softly.
"Penny!" the man exclaimed, snapping to awareness. "Thanks be to the Distant Ones. Did it work?"An avid follower of the latest in fictional fashion would by now have recognised the man as a certain Dr. J. Watson, late of the Army Medical Department, ordinarily resident at 221b Baker Street – and not noted for his familiarity with representatives of the Transfictional Canonical Defence Authority.
Penelope, however, was not fazed. "The Zeta-Iridium-Generated Guardian of Yesteryear indicates that it did, Feamintë," she said gently. "You prevented the overdose; the Detective will keep on solving his cases."
"For another half year, at least," Feamintë sighed from inside the body of Doctor Watson (the usual occupant of which was safely ensconsed in Feamintë's own corporeal form, deep in conversation with Nurse Constance of the Advanced and Regressive Medication Department). "So why haven't I leapt?"
"Maybe the stars aren't aligned yet," Penelope suggested. "Or perhaps it is simply the Daemon of Comedic Timing at work."
"I suppose so," Feamintë agreed. "Well. How... how are you holding up? We so rarely have time to talk."
"Oh, I'm keeping up appearances," Penelope said lightly. "Being attached part-time to the Phantasmic Leap Project has done miracles for my nerves; I am hardly ever described as high-strung any more."
"Then some good has come out of all this," Feamintë said with a faint smile. Penelope laughed softly.
"Some more good, you mean. You have done great things as you leapt through the Aether, you know."
"Oh, I suppose," Feamintë said, "but that's-"
There was a blurring of reality, and something seemed to go out of Watson's face. The Doctor frowned, looked up and down the street, and then strode off purposefully. Penelope watched him go, then pulled a daguerreotype out of her pocket and looked at it sadly.
It showed a young woman, her hair dark (stained with henna from its natural pale blonde), her face lit up by a smile – and perhaps something more, something unearthly, some hint of her origins in the inspired writings of an invalid soldier. She could still see the face, of course, sitting in the Accelerator as a long chain of other minds passed through it, but the woman in the picture... she was lost in the Transfictional Aether.
~
Feamintë Fioncarnë stumbled as she dropped fully into her latest new body. "Duck!" a voice cried, and she threw herself to the ground – just in time to avoid a coursing arc of electrical energy that passed over her head and grounded itself in the metal wall.
"Inanna!" called a voice, and she turned her head to see a middle-aged man beckoning her over to where he and a young woman were crouched behind a pillar. "Come on!"
"No!" exclaimed the first voice, and Feamintë's head swung round as if on a string to see a well-dressed elderly gentleman pressed against the wall. "Inanna, hold your position but a moment longer – I almost have them!"
And now the immense hissing and clanking noise brought Feamintë's attention back to the doorway – and the immense brass-and-iron monstrosity grinding through on caterpillar treads, steam already billowing from its Magnetoelectanic Discharge Cannon. Lightning flickered between two antennae atop its carpace, and a harsh, mechanical voice rang out: "EX-TER-MIN-ATE."
Feamintë gave a small scream and rolled out of the path of the incoming fire. "Oh boy..."
The world is still round
My compass is true
Each step is a step back to you...
Disclaimer: The PPC is the creation of Jay and Acacia. The TCDA is the brainchild of Pieguy. Song lyrics are taken from the works of Heather Dale. Quantum Leap is the property of NBC. Sherlock Holmes is the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doctor Who is the property of the BBC. All characters herein are mine, one way or another.
For an excerpt from the scientifictional serial tales of the Unnamed Academian and his Brave Companions Susan, Barnabas and Inanna, please follow this finely-crafted link to...