Time Capsule

A time capsule is a historic cache of goods or information, usually intended as a method of communication with future people and to help future archaeologists, anthropologists or historians.

One minute, there's a man in the bed, and the next, there's a body.

He knows, on some level, that this isn't the first time that this has happened. There's another time, buried far, far back in his memory, but he doesn't actually remember it. He can't actually remember the moment when the glasses hit the floor, because his memory files were being rapidly compressed, and his system wasn't focused on forming new ones. There's a gap in his memory, and he doesn't know how long it is; there's no time stamp on the decompressed memories. It's supposed to be a safety feature of sorts, helping to dissociate them from himself: they're memories of another life, one that both is and is not entirely his own.

It's like a time capsule: a memory of something that happened, something that once existed, but something that's not quite real anymore. It's intangible history, floating on the edge of reality but not quite within it, not quite able to be brought back into the here-and-now.

So this is the second time that this has happened, but it feels like the first. It's a sucker punch to the gut when it hits him, and it feels awful, it's the most terrible thing he's ever felt, and it feels like he's going to die for a moment that's far too long…

…Until he remembers that he can't.

He doesn't want to accept it, but he has to, so he does the only thing that he can think of to keep himself sane: he buries his father's memory deep inside him, inserts it into his own code, the very being of who he is, so that even if he forgets everything else, he can still remember this.

He's going to live too long, so he might as well be a living time capsule.

According to time capsule historian William Jarvis, most intentional time capsules usually do not provide much useful historical information: they are typically filled with "useless junk", new and pristine in condition, that tells little about the people of the time.

One minute, his son exists, and the next, he does not.

He watches everything from the shadows; he no longer exists, as far as everyone who remembers him is aware. He's familiar with the sensation of having to ditch a name, a reality, to escape to some far-away place and start over. He never admitted it, but he's made many mistakes in his unnaturally-long lifetime; somewhere, lost in decades of paperwork, there are several hundred unfulfilled charges of second-degree manslaughter, or maybe even more than that. He didn't stick around long enough to find out the truth, and with the city burning behind him, everyone had bigger things to worry about than a man who probably died during the madness of those weeks.

He's guilty for something else, too, but he can't really put a name on it; it's more an idea of something that he did wrong than something that he actually did wrong. He was less careful raising his first "born" than his son. He cared less, and he lost his name, his reputation, and his life's work in the process.

This time, it's love, not pride, that makes him drop a name. Fake his death with some clever tricks he's learned, give his son some last pieces of wisdom and the subtlest hint that "I'll always be watching over you", move on without really moving on. He goes by James now. He had a professional degree, but he doesn't have the time and doesn't take the effort to forge the paperwork necessary to transfer it to his new identity. He kisses the computer science doctorate and associated work in artificial intelligence theory goodbye; he knows there'd only be one place where he could get a job with that, and everything would fall apart all too quickly if he did that.

So he goes about his life under the New Normal, and then his son disappears into oblivion.

The doors of the building he was inside when it happened are iced over, and it's not until hours and hours later that the one of the Ninja finally breaks the ice sealing it shut. He's the only one who says "Thank you". He's the only one here who knows this Ninja personally.

The blue ninja is visibly shaken when "James" approaches him and asks what happened to Zane; a connection is made for a minute and then dismissed as absurd, nothing more than a coincidence. James wants to keep it that way.

The ninja doesn't know what to tell him, though. He asks for him to keep him… up to date. The Ninja doesn't know how to do that; he doesn't know this man, after all. James gives him his email address. Tells him to keep in touch. Leaves before everything goes horribly wrong.

That's how he hears about the funeral, through the blue ninja, his new pen-pal. He doesn't dress in anything too fancy, but he does wear only black and white. He gets new glasses for the occasion.

He's one of the first people to arrive, and he's the last person to truly leave – though he does duck out for a few hours to keep the Ninja from suspecting anything. He waits until everyone is long gone before going back for one last visit.

Maybe he says some things. He needs to say some things, after all. Like "sorry". He's not sure if this is a direct result of what he did, but it doesn't really matter at this point – he faked his death, and now his son is really, truly dead.

He leaves the last remnants of the version of his life that his son knew of – the one of the house in the forest, the unending curiosity, the kind smiles and the knowledge that there are some things that are too terrible to remember – on the steps beneath the statue. The glasses are clipped onto the collar of the folded lab coat. He sits next to them for a while, feeling all of his ninety-seven-and-a-half years and several hundred more, and he takes in the silence. The snow never stuck, and it stopped some hours ago, but he can feel his son's presence somewhere near him all the same.

That night, he sees his son in a dream: everything is okay.

Everything is okay.

Until it suddenly, and quite violently, isn't.

The dream jumps so quickly, so jarringly that he doesn't even know what to call it. Something is terribly wrong, something is so wrong and he wakes up in a cold sweat.

His apartment's A/C is broken. For some reason, the landlord can't seem to fix it. So they install a new system. The uneasy feeling gets worse. He emails his pen-pal to take his mind off of it.

A few months later, the emails stop. He replies again, two or three weeks after his friend's last correspondence, and receives an automatic reply that turns out to be the worst message of his entire life.

Hey James! You're the only person who ever sends stuff to this email, so I figured I'd just write it out to you personally. :)

If you're getting this email, it means that I'm off fighting bad guys again. You know how it is. It's like a bad week at my job on TV, except with a less predictable end date? I hope I'm explaining this well enough.

Anyway, we all promised that we'd try and keep quiet about this, because we don't actually know for sure and it would be awful if it got out and then turned out to all be false. My friends don't know that I'm writing this to you, which is why I set it to be an automatic vacation message instead of just sending it to you. So just keep this between us, okay? I don't think you'll tell anyone, but… you know. This is kinda personal, I don't want the whole world to know about it.

So, a few days ago the four of us got back together to eat at a restaurant…

Something is terribly wrong.

Many buried time capsules are lost, as interest in them fades and the exact location is forgotten, or they are destroyed within a few years by groundwater.

After they come back, he arranges to meet his son.

His anxiety grows in the days leading up to it. He prepares a little speech, a short explanation of why he did what he did, and how much he regretted it. He also practices knowing when to shut up, in the also-viable scenario in which no explanation is necessary.

His son looks so different, and he's really hoping that that's not his fault. A nagging bit of paranoia gnaws at him, but he shoos it away.

He's prepared for the first, and hopes for the second, but neither of those happens.

His friend introduces him, and there is no recognition in his son's eyes.

After an awkward conversation, he goes home and emails his friend.

Can you do something for me?

A reply comes a few minutes later.

Sure, what?

He types his next words with care.

I want you to kill Zane.

There's an unnaturally long pause between his email and the reply; in his mind's eye, he sees his friend staring dumbly at what's right in front of his face.

YOU THINK I'M GOING TO KILL MY BEST FRIEND? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

I'm sorry that I have to ask this. But he's not the same.

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, TELLING ME HE'S "NOT THE SAME"? HE'S MY BEST FRIEND?

I'm his father. I would know.

Oh my god. Oh my god.

I'm sorry.

If Zane doesn't remember you anymore, then that's all the better. Because if I ever see you again, I am going to be the one killing you.

And that's the end of the conversation.

Therefore, time capsules can be seen, in respect to their usefulness to historians, as dormant museums, their releases timed for some date so far in the future that the building in question is no longer intact.

There's a strange man that he notices, every now and then. His eye seems drawn to him whenever he looks out across the crowds at the Ninjas' various public appearances. He appears at almost every single one. He can sense a strange kind of feeling there: a connection, but not exactly a connection; a feeling that something is both wrong and right at the same time. He was introduced at one point, but the man's name felt fake and forced when it came out of his mouth. Zane knows this strange man as something other than James, but he doesn't know what…

Suddenly, abruptly, the man stops coming to any of their events. He simply disappears into oblivion. Jay is angrier than usual for a long time; he claims to be upset over a fallout with a friend none of them knew he had.

For the first few weeks, he won't even look at Zane, but eventually he comes to apologize.

"I'm sorry," Jay says, over and over, every time he sees Zane. "I chased him away."

Zane doesn't understand, but his mind comes back to that strange man, James-not-James, who he knows he's seen before…

For once, he hopes to never find the answer.

(A/N): So I was in a terrible mood tonight. Today. Tuesday October 27th, 2015 in general. Whichever you prefer, frankly. Only good thing that happened was that I got an 84 on an essay that I bullshitted the night before it was due. Everything else was absolutely terrible.

So I asked for prompts on my writing Tumblr (woodswolf-writes) to vent with angsty stuff. I was given two that involved Zane and Julien, and decided to write them first. Frankly, I'm feeling a lot better now after writing this, but I'll probably write the other two similar ones within the next few days or so if I have time.

This was written in about two and a half hours, give or take fifteen minutes or so. Put out the call for prompts at 7:36 pm, started adding this A/N on FFN at around 10:30 pm. It was also written almost entirely to the piano version of This Is Gospel by Panic! at the Disco, among a few other songs that I listened to once or twice before switching off of. The four bold-italic quotes are all from the Wikipedia page on time capsules.

There are more than a few references to TLYWT and the various incarnations of the Zane Version Zero theory in here, and you might have gotten more out of this fic if you'd read them beforehand. They're really minor, though, and not worth much explanation.

Important note: For anybody who's reading TSC, I'm not sure if I'm going to finish it at this point. Chapter Eleven's almost done, and if I ever finish it I might publish it. Unfortunately, I don't really have enough motivation for that fic anymore to hold my interest. I may or may not post more details about this on my writing Tumblr, including possibly putting this fic up for community adoption by any interested parties. (There are a few people I have in mind that I might pass the torch onto, but only if they so desire it.)