5603/This Can Only Lead To Time Travel

From Heroes Assemble MUSH
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This Can Only Lead To Time Travel
Date of Scene: 16 March 2021
Location: GIRL HQ, Pym Technologies corporate campus, NJ
Synopsis: Irie meets Nadia and asks for her help dealing with the Speed Force. Timelines everywhere tremble in fear.
Cast of Characters: Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Irie West




Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
It has been a few days since the big G.I.R.L. sleepover when some of the brightest young female minds on the planet indulged in nachos, pizza, pillow fights, and designing an FTL interstellar spacecraft. But such work is never done and even with construction set to begin soon in a remote secret location, Nadia is never satisfied and still going over the draft designs making small adjustments and changes here and there in endless pursuit of the perfect design.

Currently Nadia is in her own lab space, one of many interconnected such spaces in the GIRL HQ with all manner of amazing scientific equipment. Between the various members access to Wakandan, Fantastic Four, Pym Tech, Stark Tech, and others it is easily one of the most advanced sets of lab spaces on the planet.

She is wearing a white lab coat with a GIRL logo on the back, surrounded by holographic floating 'whiteboard' screens as she makes design changes and performs various calculations on the most efficient ways to do things that will be able to withstand the stresses she intends to put the ship through.

Irie West has posed:
When you're a speedster coming from the kind of lineage that Irie does, there really isn't a place that's 'too far away'. When she got the details as to where GIRLs headquarters are from Vivan, she didn't waste much time to head on over. An email is shot over (once Irie actually gets one) to Nadia to confirm that she should be expecting Irie on her doorstep the next day.

On the day of her arrival, Irie decided to come all costumed up. That way if she had to stop anywhere between Metropolis and Jersey, she wouldn't have to try to find unique ways to hide her identity, after all she hasn't gone public yet. It doesn't take her that long to get to Jersey, comparatively. Certainly much faster than taking the hyperloop, but not as fast as what her father would be able to achieve.

She slows down once she gets up to the lab, stopping at the front door. She fidgets for a moment, kind of nervous before ringing the buzzer. "Uh. Hi! It's me! Irie West?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
At the front entrance Irie is greeted by security, because you don't have this level of advanced technology concentrated in one place without some. Nevermind that any attacker would like incur the wrath of several leading hero groups. All the same, basic precautions and protocals are observed.

Irie is asked to enter her name and some other information on a Guest register and then the guards call up to Nadia's lab who verifies that she is indeed expecting company. One of the guards then escorts Irie up to where Nadia is working at a perhaps painfully slow pace for a speedster.

"Hello! You must be Irie!" The young speedster is greeted by a waving Nadia who is all smiles when the door opens. She pushes several holographic displays aside to emerge from her cocoon of schematics and calculations. "It is wonderful to meet you!"

Irie West has posed:
"Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm getting to meet *the* Nadia Pym-van Dyne." Irie gushes "You're like..." She stops herself, takes a breath and mutters to herself, "Right, she hasn't done any of that yet." She takes a moment to compose herself, smoothing out her costume and combing her fingers through her hair before starting again.

"Hi! I am," she says with an answering wave. "It's good to meet you, too!" She takes a look around eyes wide with wonder, "Wow. This place is so cool!" She glances at the schematic and exclaims, "That's the spaceship!" She stops herself again, eyes shifting guiltily. "... Which you obviously haven't finished yet."

She sighs, resignedly. She's doing a really poor job of this. "I'm sorry. I don't know how much they told you about me but I'm Wally West's daughter from the future, and I really need to learn how to keep some of my inner thoughts to myself."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia blinks for a moment, never having had /the/ put in front of her name before. She's certainly done it herself with her science heroes like the Dr. Barbara (don't call her that) Morse and the Dr. von Doom, but to be given a 'the' herself? That takes the young woman a bit offguard.

"Yes! We are building a spaceship! Or will be soon, we need to go investigate what seems to be aliens meddling with a very nice girl named Mori. Hopefully it isn't another invasion, that would be like the third one in the past year. Give it a rest aliens! And you too dopplegangers! Oh right," She brings her attention back to Irie getting a bit caught up in her tangent.

"Wait, you're Wally's daughter... but he's not... OH! FROM THE FUTURE! THAT'S SO COOL!!!" One of the fastest ways to really get Nadia's attention. And then suddenly she's rapidly moving in circles around Iria, haviing produced some sort of exotic energy scanning device from somewhere on her person, "These tachyon readings are amazing, you really are from the future! How did you do it? Like there's a ton of different theories on time travel, I'm just curious which one actually worked?"

Irie West has posed:
Irie chuckles rubbing the back of her head, "I'm not really sure," she admits. "The last time I 'aged up,' oh yeah, that's the thing I came here about sometimes I'll just have this kind of growth spurt, like, three months ago I was 10, but now I'm 16! I think Close enough. Technically I'm only five years old." She shakes her head. "Everybody doesn't want me to suddenly grow old and die."

"Oh yeah!" she gets back to the original point, "So after I aged up I found I could tap into the Speed Force like my dad, and so we wanted to see how fast I could run. So there I am, running, and then I feel the thing. It's the same kind of thing that I feel when I'm about to age up. And then I just kind of *catapult* forward," she says shooting her hand forward in demonstration, "right into the Speed Force itself."

She shakes her head. "It's not something I recommend. Imagine running downhill, where your body wants to make you run faster than you really can. It's like that but you can't make yourself slow down *ever* and so you just have to keep running or else you'll end up tripping and being swallowed by it all."

"But anyway, so there I am in the speed force, and I could just *feel* whenever anybody tapped into it. Wally, Bart, Barry, Zoom, you name it. I couldn't really tell who was who except for Wally, because he's my dad and we've synched up before so I know what his feels like. So I just kind of latched onto his signature and *pushed* myself through the Speed Force and ended up here in the past."

She stops, realizing that she's kind of been talking without really taking a breath so she does so, now. "I know that really doesn't answer your question," she says sheepishly. "I doubt 'Speed Force Shenanigans' was on the list of possible answers.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"That's actually gravity and momentum not your body, trying to move you at a speed faster than your legs can keep up with." This brought to you by Nadia's Neat Science Facts.

Nadia listens attentively to Irie's explanation. It is surprisingly easy for her to keep up with being used to breathlessly long tangents herself. "Oh the Speed Force." She says like this explains everything. "I don't know too much about it, but the papers I have seen talked about how it undeniably exists but also really doesn't fit into our current model of physics, which is to say our observational understanding of how reality functions. But if it exists, like magic, it must fit in somehow. I would /love/ to study it first hand!"

Nadia is grinning as she keeps glancing at the tachyon readings, and it is obvious the gears are now turning in her head as to how to detect/measure the Speed Force in Irie. "Just based on circumstantial evidence, what you're describing sounds like you have an especially strong connection to this force, moreso than the others who tap into it and that is impacting you physically. Think of it like how our bodies need some solar energy to stay healthy, but too much can burn our skin or cause cancer. Unless you're a Kryptonian and then you become Supergirl instead. Anyway, it sounds like at least the preliminary answer is to limit your contact with the Speed Force until you can gain better control over it, maybe through some sort of artificial regulator. Also you don't talk like you're five, which would indicate the aging is more than physical and rather than just aging you are perhaps experiencing time like a video player in fast forward, which Speed Force not Age Force, that seems logical."

Irie West has posed:
"Mmhmm. Mmhmm," Irie says nodding along with Nadia. "Yeah. That makes sense. Oh! I've met Supergirl before. In the future that is. Not in the now. It still feels weird because saying 'now' is in the past when 'then' is in the future." She shakes her head. "English doesn't handle time travel well," she decides. "My mom was pregnant with us in the speed force so she was only pregnant for less than 24 hours before she had us. Us being my brother Jai and me. Jai's still in the future where he belongs." She mutters under her breath, "He /better/ be in the future where he belongs."

"So that would make sense that my connection to the Speed Force is more intrinsic than it would my father, but I don't know about regulating it because wouldn't that mean I wouldn't be able to go fast again? I wouldn't want that. I'd rather live a shorter life and help people than live longer and stay on the sidelines."

She watches as Nadia reads her with some kind of device and her face lights up in a grin. "Oh! Measure me when I do *this!*" She gets a kind of red and yellow glow, with electrical like Speed Force arcs around her as she starts phasing. "If I vibrate *just right* I can shift my molecules a little to the left and can just pass right through stuff, see?" She finds something that doesn't look all that important and sticks a a finger through it.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia watches the vibrational phasing, eyes shining, "That. Is. So. Cool!" She squees fascinated. "I wonder if I could duplicate that effect somehow and how it differs from Viv's mass based phasing." More gears turning in her brain.

She considers and shakes her head, "Regulating doesn't mean stopping, or well it could but that be more in an on/off switch type of thing making sure you're only accessing it when you need it, but what I was thinking was more a means of regulating your intake of this energy so you don't get overwhelmed by it when you are drawing from it. There's several ways it might be accomplished, but without experimentation and testing it will be very difficult to determine what is actually feasible."

Irie West has posed:
"Isn't it!?" agrees Irie. "It's the first thing I learned how to do. Jai could accelerate his metabolism and make himself *super strong*, though there was this one point where whatever it is that makes us age up effected him different and he started to mutate." She shakes her head. "We managed to get that under control by calming him down because he was panicking, and it hasn't happened since." She scowls, "I hope it doesn't happen again because I disappeared."

When she stops phasing, she puts her hands on her hips in thought. "You'd have to build a device that could tap into the Speed Force. As far as I know nobody has really been able to do that without blowing themselves up, or shooting themselves into the future or anything like that."

She bobs her head in understanding when Nadia explains what she means. "You mean it's more like a surge protector. It would allow for the normal flow of Speed Force but any surges would ground it out and keep me from aging up." She taps a finger on her chin. "That is *if* that's what's happening."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia nods her head in agreement, "Exactly!" She seems pleased that Irie is following her train of thought. "Oh, I might not be able to do it myself. But that's why I made G.I.R.L. to solve the big SCIENCE! problems that none of us could achieve on our own. We have some of the most brilliant girls in the world collaborating here. My friend Val is /really/ smart and her Dad is Dr. Richards, we also have some truly genius engineers. I'm /sure/ we can help you if we work together!"

"Exactly, like a surge protector, just like that, to keep it from overloading you." Nadia agrees, "That is a great analogy. It wouldn't be the first explosion I've caused either way and seeing the future does not sound like a negative consequence!" She is clearly blinded by the prospect of exploring new scientific unknowns and there is probably very little that could truly dampen her desire to pursue this.

Irie West has posed:
"Yes! The Valeria Richards!" exclaims Irie excitedly, "I want to meet her, too! And /all/ the rest of the GIRL team. You all are super cool." She shakes her head. "If I were smarter I could be a member too, but if you don't mind if I hang out I could be... I dunno..." She thinks for a moment before snapping her fingers and pointing, "Your sidekick! I may not be able to design all the sciencey stuff but I can put it all together real quick!"

"Oh!" she continues, "I can also do this thing where I read a book real fast, like, in under a second, and I can retain all the knowledge I get there!" She waggles her hand at that, though. "MMmmmostly. It's how I gave myself most of a high school education when I aged up. I tried to teach myself everything I could find on relativity thinking that it helped, but it only stayed in there for about an hour. I still remember a bunch of it, though."

"OH, OH!" Irie exclaims, suddenly getting serious. Not that she wasn't serious before, but now she's getting *super serious.* "Before we begin, there's a few things I have to go over with you. I thought about this a lot. Like, a *lot*, because time travel is tricky business. Whatever solution we come up with we *have* to keep secret, that is, until I end up going back in the past twenty years from now. If the technology is known, then Dad would have used it on me by now, which means I wouldn't have aged up like I did, which means that I would have grown up normally so I wouldn't have catapulted myself back in time."

She looks down sadly and says, "This also means that fifteen years from now, when I'm born, I'm going to have to go dark. I didn't know about me, which means that either we didn't find a solution and I aged up and died, or we did and I wasn't around. So I have to, like, not do superhero things for five years until I go back in time then I can show back up and be with my family again."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"Val is SO cool!" Nadia agrees, high energy can be contagious and with two such individuals in close proximity it is almost like a feedback loup of excitement.

"There are a lot of different forms of intelligence, some people think our current forms of classification do not go nearly far enough in recognizing them. Knowing lots of things is a really useful thing in itself, like just being smart can only do so much, SCIENCE! is a continuously evolving body of knowledge where we build on what came before or in some cases rewrite it, but knowledge is really important. Some people even say knowledge is power, so if you can absorb lots of knowledge that's really cool."

She listens attentively to Irie's talk about about having to keep things secret and nods her head, that makes sense though she holds up a finger when Irie starts looking sad, "OR third option, we figure out how to send you back right after you left, no going dark required." If there is one thing that can be said about Nadia, it is that she is dauntless in the face of SCIENCE! Where others might declare something impossible she simply appends a 'yet' and then makes it happen.

Irie West has posed:
Irie nods her head rapidly as Nadia speaks. "I mean, I don't think I could read a whole library and retain everything," she concedes. "That would be a lot of work, and then there would be a lot of stuff that I'm not sure I *want* to know much about. But still. If you need somebody to cram a bunch of information in her head all at once for about an hour, I'm your gal!"

She thinks about Nadia's third option before slowly shaking her head. "No, I think you'd still have to keep it secret. This kind of technology just doesn't *exist* when I was in the future. Trust me, dad was looking all over the place for it. I mean, he tried to hide that from me, like how he tries to hide how worried he is about it, and I let him. I don't want to make him worry even more than he does. But anyway, if GIRL had come up with a solution, he probably would have found out about it."

She scowls as another though crosses her mind. "The fact that he was searching for the solution means that he we found one, and he was just acting like he was looking for one, which he must have been doing because he never let on that he knew about us or what was going to happen, or we didn't find one." She squinches up her face as she goes deeper into thought. "Oooor the very act of me being here shot us off into a parallel reality, in which case there's a Dad out there that will never see me again." Her scowl deepens. "I don't like that possibility very much."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Unflappable optimism smiles back at Irie, "That's what I meant, keep the secret, option three just means you wouldn't have to go dark because there would be no overlap. Keeping secrets is fine, I don't even tell anyone how some of my tech works because some of it could be ridiculously dangerous in the wrong hands. I like sharing new discoveries with the world, but I've also learned it is important to make sure the world is ready for them and then you might have a case like this too, where keeping a discovery secret saves a timeline." Nadia makes a face at the notion Wally would somehow have found out about anything GIRL developed. "Your Dad is a pretty great guy, I like him. I was trained by Russian Super Spies though, I'm pretty sure I can hide things from him." She winks.

"As for parallel realities, I've travelled to parallel realities before, that's not out of the question. Actually we've been having problems recently with an invasion from a really bad parallel reality, but that's an area I have some experience in. Those can be crossed if need be, so stay positive." She smiles that unflinching smile of hers.