jmart request: time travel but make it funny?
I’ve seen plenty of s5 jmart traveling back to s1, but none of s1 jmart traveling forwards in time to s5....
“Well that’s . . . not right.”
Following Jon’s gaze, Martin squinted up at the sky, and had to agree that yes, dark, churning green clouds and a gigantic, unblinking eye staring down at them where the sun should be was, to put it succinctly, not right at all.
“I told you not to go through that door,” said Martin. “But no, apparently we’re researchers, Martin, with obligations to investigate paranormal phenomena, no matter how stupid it is to go through a weird door that suddenly appears in your office--”
“I’m not--it’s not stupid to do my job,” Jon snapped. “And you didn’t have to follow me through.”
Martin felt his face heat. “Well, I, uh. Didn’t want something to--happen to you.”
Jon gestured around them, at the--well, at the everything. “Bit late for that now,” he muttered, his voice barely audible above the distant background noise of tortured screams.
Martin cast his gaze around the--well, hellscape wouldn’t be a bad word for it. They were definitely outside, on a . . . hill? Somewhere? But there were no other landmarks or buildings to identify. “Where are we, anyway?” he asked, not really expecting an answer.
“Hmm,” Jon said, squinting down at the blighted ground surrounding them, as though it may contain a few clues, or perhaps had personally offended him in some way. He kicked at the dirt with the toe of his shined work shoe. Then he nodded, satisfactorily, and said, “Probably a shared hallucination.”
“Shared hallucinations are surprisingly common,” Jon said, as though he were teaching a lesson to a class of students he was rather disappointed by. “Especially by people who work in close quarters, isolated from the outside world.”
“Wh--And that’s us, then, is it?” Martin said, growing frustrated now. “Two people who work in a basement together with two other coworkers just one day up and lose their minds. Is that what you think is happening here, Jon?”
“I can’t see another explanation for it,” Jon said, utterly stonefaced. In the distance, an explosion was heard, followed by a plume of red smoke and a chorus of animalistic screams.
“Right,” Martin said, mostly to himself. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Right. Okay. Of course, he doesn’t believe any of it, you could staple hard evidence of the supernatural to the guy’s forehead and he wouldn’t--”
“I can hear you, you know,” Jon said, so deadpan his voice was in danger of flattening the hill they were standing on.
“Good,” said Martin, daring Jon to tell him off, but instead he just rolled his eyes.
“Really, Martin, this is silly. I can prove this isn’t real. All I have to do is walk in one direction, and keep going, and eventually I’ll hit the wall of my office. Where we both still are.”
“Alright,” said Martin, crossing his arms. “So do it, then.”
“I will,” Jon said primly, and pointed himself at the horizon. Slowly, he began to walk, hands spread out in front of him, as though anticipating smacking into something he couldn’t see. Martin watched as Jon took five steps, ten steps, twenty . . . and after that he lost count, because Jon had disappeared over the lip of the hill.
A few moments later, Jon reappeared, huffing with some effort as he climbed back up the hill again. “Well,” he said, between breaths, “it seems this hallucination is more thorough than I thought.”
Throwing up his hands in frustration, Martin said, “Christ, Jon, I can’t believe--god, why do you have to be so bloody stubborn. And why do I have to like it so much.”
“I--Wait, what did you just--”
“Look, whatever the hell this all is, it’s real, and it’s happening, and we’ve got to deal with it,” Martin went on. “I don’t know how, but somehow we’ve got to. And if we’re stuck together, here, then . . . then we’re stuck together.” He nodded decisively, hoping he sounded more certain than he felt.
For once, Jon didn’t make a fuss. He seemed to deflate, a bit, and nodded reluctantly. “I suppose . . . I suppose it would best to play along, for now.”
Martin looked around, taking in the horror show that surrounded them on all sides. “Well,” he said, “I guess we’d better start walking.”
“Honestly, I don’t think it really matters,” Martin said.
“Let’s not split up, though,” Jon said quickly.
A warm feeling spread through Martin’s chest, despite himself. “Yeah,” he agreed. “We’ll go together.”
And so they set off, not exactly hand-in-hand, on a journey with an unknown destination, for what purpose they couldn’t be sure. And maybe, just maybe, they would both learn a little something on the way.
