He’d had Lyla do a few scans. It wasn’t technically what she was designed to do, but Miguel had been hacking Alchemax tech for just about as long as he could remember. Adding a few extra features to the A.I. had been simple enough, and Lyla hadn’t minded, so he set up some scans. Simple things at first --- scanning old news articles to see if anything he should know about was happening, scanning tech signatures and com frequencies to let him know when enforcers were near. But this... This was a bit more complex.
Getting Lyla to look into people’s energy signals was, even by 2099 standards, shady. But Miguel was desperate, and he needed help. If he was going to get back home, he needed someone with experience in something similar. So far, he’d yet to find any time travelers... but he had found someone just slightly out of tune with frequencies common in this dimension. It wasn’t perfect, but it was close. It was something. And grasping at straws was a hell of a lot better than grasping at open air.
The bell above the door at the florist’s shop dinged as Miguel entered, and he made a beeline for the counter, passing it once before ducking into an aisle and pulling up Lyla’s holo avatar on his wrist watch. “What do we got, Lyla?”
“Facial recognition scans identified Gwen Stacy, deceased.”
“Deceased? She’s clearly not deceased. She’s standing right there.”
“Records show she died several ---”
“Records show --- Lyla she’s right there. Is this --- She came into a universe where she’s dead? Shock, that’s dark.” Lyla opened her mouth to speak again before suddenly powering off the hologram, and Miguel tensed. He knew there was only one reason the A.I. would do that.
Slowly, he turned around, utterly unsurprised to find himself face to face with Gwen Stacy, deceased. That was how his luck usually went. “Hi. Yeah. Still looking. Great flowers!” How much had she heard?
