Cisco Ramon is the official meta-human (namegenerator) wrote in multifariousic, @ 2015-07-22 17:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !thread, caitlin snow (doctorsnow), cisco ramon (namegenerator) |
WHO: Caitlin Snow & Cisco Ramon
WHERE: Apartment Building, NYC
WHEN: Wednesday afternoon, 7/22
WHAT: Arrival
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: Closed, Complete
She’d read the letter. She would have read it a hundred more times had it not vanished from the screen. And she meant vanished. Unable to find it anywhere, Caitlin had instead gone to the window, only to find herself staring out at New York City, instead of Central City. She wasn’t sure how long she was staring open-mouthed at the window before coming to her senses. Staring wasn’t going to get her back home. It wasn’t like the note could be real. It didn’t make any sense. It had to be some kind of (terrible) joke, or trick. She didn’t know what, but she was sure as hell going to find out. Caitlin did not have time for this. Between catching not!Wells, Barry’s potential time travel, and Ronnie showing up, there was only one place Caitlin wanted to be, and that was at STAR labs. She was supposed to be getting married, for God sake. Finally. After everything they had been through. Nothing else was allowed to get in their way. The two of them had more than paid their dues. As quietly as she could, Caitlin moved to the door of the bedroom she woke up in, and slowly pulled the door open. She couldn’t hear anyone. There were no cameras that she could see, which didn’t mean much. Moving at a pace that would probably drive Barry up the wall, she literally peeked around the corner out into the living room from the hallway. It didn’t look like sort of kidnapping. The room was in order. There was no one posted to watch her, and it didn’t look like anything was locking up. It wasn’t as nice as her own apartment, but it wasn’t bad. “Uh, hello?” she finally called, as the feeling of panic over finding some bad guy out here started to fade. It wasn’t like this was the revenge of the meta-humans. They would have just killed her. Or stuck her in some hole. Not a fully furnished apartment building with a nice view, right? Things were getting intense, again, as they always seemed to, because in Central City nothing was ever easy anymore. By the time everything was said and done for the night and Cisco had gotten back to his apartment, he couldn’t even be bothered to change and go to bed. Instead, he’d laid down on the couch, because it was the closest thing to the door, and he’d passed out. Tomorrow, Caitlin was finally going to get to marry Ronnie, Barry might travel through time and change all of their lives forever...or he could die trying, Wells might win, and life as Cisco knew it could cease to be; all in all, there was a lot on the line and he needed to be rested, but beyond that, Cisco was frakking wiped. The sound of Caitlin’s voice calling out roused him and Cisco woke with a start, jolting up on the couch. “Huh? What? What’s...why are you in—” He stopped. The question he meant to ask, as it would seem, was irrelevant, because she wasn’t in his apartment. This...this was not his apartment. This was not his couch. Groping over his chest with both hands and then his head and face to make sure he wasn’t...well, dreaming again, he got to his feet and looked over at her with wide eyes. “...what’s going on…? Where are we….?” The sound of someone in the room caused her to jump a foot in the air. But she knew that voice, and when her gaze fell on Cisco, she sighed in relief. At least he wasn’t going to try and kill her. Caitlin walked right across the room and threw open the blinds to outside, before turning back around and pointing behind her. “New York. We’re in New York City.” the frustration mixed with slight panic made it pretty obvious she had no idea how they got there. Caitlin held up her tablet, which was still in one hand. “I woke up to this.” she said, before pointing to the one that looked like it was now Ciscos. “Looks like you have on too. There was a little, some sort of welcome letter, that was going on about being brought to this reality. I read through it once and then it just vanished. Like actually vanished. I haven’t been able to find it again.” Half of what she was saying probably didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense to her. But she would have really loved another look at that letter. Sinking down into a chair beside the couch, she let her eyes fall on Cisco, her posture slouching. She was so tired, of all of this. Today was supposed to be her day, even if it was all going to fall apart right after. “We went from Central City to New York overnight, without waking up. I tried calling Ronnie. It wouldn’t connect.” The change in the light in the room gave way to a reflexive squint, but he didn’t hold it long, because it wasn’t that much brighter outside. “New York?” he asked incredulously. Cisco, for one thing, hadn’t ever actually been to New York City, but even if he had been, he sure as hell hadn’t come here in his sleep. ...did he? No. No, definitely not and definitely not with Caitlin. His eyes moved from her tablet to the one on the coffee table beside him to which Caitlin was indicating. Cisco reached for his and almost turned it on, but stopped, pausing to let Caitlin finish. “What do you mean, it just vanished? There’s no trace of it? Anywhere? Did you check the DCIM?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow. Of course she did. That’s the first place he would’ve checked, but even if it wasn’t the first place she would’ve, she was smart enough to know her way around a freaking iPad; of course she did. “Stupid question, sorry, never mind,” he interrupted before she could answer and at least he had the grace to look sheepishly apologetic for even asking. Cisco watched Caitlin cross the room and collapse onto the chair, so he sat back down on the couch, turning the tablet over in his hands absently. “There’s nothing in New York City that would interrupt a cellular signal that badly...I mean, unless this building is made of thick stone or metal, and even then, there’d be interference but you’d get something.” Scrubbing his face with his hands after setting down his tablet in his lap, Cisco gave a succinct, thoughtful hum. “Do you know how to take a screenshot? On that, I mean?” he asked, because, for all he knew, she was more familiar with an opposite operating system and Caitlin was not a stupid woman by any stretch, but she was in a stressful and confusing situation and it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for her not to be able to think about something as trivial and seemingly irrelevant as taking a screen capture from a tablet that didn’t actually belong to her. “Can you try to? See if it works?” he tacked on. Cisco looked down at his own. “I’m just wondering if, when I turn mine on, if I’ll have the letter, too…” His eyes moved back up to meet Caitlin’s with a significant look. “Maybe you can get another look at that letter…” Maybe if they were both able to take their time and read it over more than once and slowly, it would say something that she’d missed the first time; something that would tell them how they got here and how to get back. “I didn’t think there would be. But nothing. My cell phone works though. I called 311, I looked up a random pizza shop and called that. The wifi works just fine, by the way. The phone works, but it won’t connect to anyone at home.” Which didn’t make much sense to her, even if that wasn’t her area of expertise. Was it possible to block her phone from calling certain numbers? Because it wasn’t like Ronnie would be trying to keep her from calling them. Caitlin said nothing, keeping her expression blank until he finished explaining what he was talking about. That idea gave her a little more hope. Because there definitely had to be something she had missed when she first read through the letter. Especially since she thought the whole thing was crazy. Setting her own tablet down on her lap, she siped it back to the home screen. Caitlin swiped her hand across the screen, and then watched as the image wa captured and sent to her photos. “It’s pretty standard. Swipe the screen from side to side, and there’s the screen cap.” she held up the tablet so he could see the screen, tapped the apps button, the files, then photos. There, saved to the tablet, was a photo of the main screen. It was weird enough that the letter had simply vanished. But a screen capture wouldn’t do the same. Cisco seemed sure of it, and he would know better, between the two of them. But then again, Caitlin wasn’t an idiot, if you had of asked her half an hour ago if something would just vanish like that off a screen, she would have said no. Yeah...that...made no sense. At all. And the look on Cisco’s face illustrated that pretty well, just in case she didn’t already think so which, obviously she did. “What the hell?” he wondered aloud, fishing his own phone out of his pocket and trying to call Barry, just to see if his phone would get the same result. It did. “What if I…?” his voice trailed off and he scrolled a little further down his contacts and called Caitlin’s phone. His eyebrows lifted and his eyes widened a little when her phone started to ring as normal. “...well, that’s special...” Ending the call, Cisco set his phone down on the couch cushion beside him and watched Caitlin attempt to get her tablet to screenshot properly. With a facial shrug of approval, satisfied that the device could do it, he picked up his own tablet and held down the power button to boot it up. “Well, let’s see if mine does.” The lock screen lit up once the iPad powered on and Cisco purposefully looked away from the screen and at Caitlin as he swiped with one finger to open the home screen. “You didn’t touch anything right? It was just there on the home screen?” he asked, simultaneously holding down the sleep and home buttons. The sound of a photo being taken went off and he let go of the buttons. “Here, come here, we’ll read it together, just in case the screenshot theory is another inexplicable big ol’ fail,” he offered, still not looking down at his screen yet. Something told him that as soon as he did, it would start some kind of internal countdown on the device which would then prompt the letter to vanish like hers did after a pre-determined length of time that it would take the average reader to finish reviewing the thing. “Too bad Barry’s not here...I bet he could read it a hundred times in the amount of time it takes us to read it once,” he said with a quiet huff of both amusement and frustration. “I’m thinking there’s a censor for your eyes, like Android devices have, now, you know? So it can tell when you’re looking at the screen and then once you do, there’s gotta be some kind of timer on it, or something. Don’t look at it, just sit next to me and we’ll look down on the count of three,” he proposed. Once Caitlin was beside him, Cisco counted off and then looked down at the letter, trying to speed read it to the best of his own ability. Caitlin had already seen it; she could skim it for things she might’ve missed and he could read it maybe twice if he was lucky enough before it vanished and, if the screen capture failed, then they could compare notes. It was better than nothing. She hadn’t been kidding when she said that the letter made no damn sense, because everything he did manage to read before it disappeared from the screen had sounded like the plot of a really stupid SyFy movie of the week. Cisco looked back up at Caitlin and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through puffed cheeks. “Moment of truth…” he muttered before looking back down at the thing and going into its photo gallery. Cisco’s face lit up. “Yatzee!” he said with a grin, pulling up the file of the screenshot he’d taken. “Right, so…” he murmured, looking back down at it and reading it over again. “We’re in a parallel universe...we’re potentially fictional, we can’t leave, and we’re not dreaming. Yeah, that sounds totally normal and not at all like a shared hallucination…” He looked up at Caitlin again. “Did I miss anything important?” Skimming the letter more than once while Cisco read through it did absolutely nothing to convince her that what she was reading was true. Yes, they were in New York (unless there was some way to fake that) and they couldn’t reach home. But seriously? Fictional? Alternate realities? Okay, the alternate realities she might be able to get into, since they had already established that time travel was possible. But fictional? Caitlin pointed to the screen, where it mentioned Los Angeles as well. “We can teleport. But only between two cities.” Yep, she was totally buying into this. This was like some Star Trek fans dream come true. Maybe if Chris Pine was involved, she’d be a little more convinced. “Could Wells have done this some how?” she asked, looking up to meet his gaze. “I mean, we caught him, but set this all up somehow before we did? I guess I should say Thawne.” Caitlin was still having a hard time dealing with the fact that their mentor and employer, was in fact not the man he was supposed to be, and was actually both crazy, and evil. “But maybe he has something else planned and this is just…a really weird way to keep us occupied while he gets to Barry.” “I’m not gonna lie to you...I kind of want to try it to see if it’s legit,” Cisco admitted, looking both sheepish and boyishly excited. “But more importantly...the alternate universe is what I’m caught on. I mean...if it’s true, then we just proved the quantum multiverse theory of quantum mechanics to be law rather than theory at all.” He paused. “Hugh Everett’s many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics basically says that every decision you make can create an alternate reality. If I throw a die and it lands on a one, somewhere on some plane of existence, there’s a Cisco who throws the die and it lands on a two, and then another on a three, and then a four, and so on. This letter says that we might experience instances of ‘face-twins’ and ‘multiples,’ which, to me, sounds like layman’s terms for doppelgängers.” Cisco ran a hand through his hair and frowned with concern. “If that’s true, too, then...theoretically or, more accurately, realistically, then this might be the uninterpreted seventh reality in my previous example, wherein...literally all the others can co-exist. I don’t understand how that wouldn’t create a catastrophic paradox to end all things. It doesn’t even make sense.” He shook his head to her question, though. “Time and space travel aside because we know that’s at least possible, there’s no way Wells could…” Cisco looked back up at her. “...I mean, could he? This isn’t just traveling through time or teleporting at random like Peek-a-Boo. This is literally taking the many-worlds interpretation and smashing the possibilities all together into one solitary universe and somehow not creating an implosion of all things. That’s...Wells is smart and powerful but not like that…” “So now we’ve gone from meta-humans, to time travel, to alternate realities, and doppelgängers. Don’t you think this is getting a little too much like the next straight to TV bad science fiction movie? It’s going to give Sharkndo a run for it’s money.” They understood the theory behind what he was saying. But to suddenly just have fell into it. “I was actually talking about a distraction for us running with the idea that we really were still in our own reality and this whole thing is just designed to mess with us. But okay, moving right along to acceptance of being in an alternate reality.” Caitlin stood back up and headed back over to the windows, sliding aside the door to the patio. From down below the noise of New York city washed into the living room. “So we’re in New York Ciy, in another reality, and fictional. Is there more of us? How many? Maybe they’re in this building too. Assuming we’re accepting everything that letter is saying, what are we supposed to do now?” Caitlin looked at her tablet again, waiting for it to tell her something more. “More importantly, where can I find someone to slap because I’m supposed to be getting married toda...” She stopped, and let out a frustrated sigh upon actually reading the date. “Married months ago.” This whole thing was insane. Yet given how much they had experienced so far, not as insane as it should have been. “You do realize how crazy this all sounds, right?” "Yeah, tell me about it," Cisco frowned. "At least we weren't in Sharknado. And I'm not accepting it yet, I'm just saying, if that letter is true then...this is way out of his scope," he finished with a sigh. "...and, you know, the general scope of reality. As far as a distraction, technically yes, but...wouldn't we have felt it when he moved us? I would think we would've," he said, his brow creased in thought. "And how is he jamming our phones so specifically? I can call you, you can call for pizza...but we can't reach anybody else? It's weird and it seems like..." Cisco stood up and scratched the back of his neck before giving an exaggerated shrug and dropping his arms back to his sides as Caitlin moved back toward the window. "...excessive. It doesn't really feel like his style, you know? I don't know, I just have a weird feeling..." He made his way over to stand beside Caitlin, sighing again and looking out the window with her. "If the letter is true, yeah. There must be more, why just us? You're not my doppelgänger and I'm not yours, so that would imply that there's more than just you and I here. As for the rest, your guess is as good as mine, but there's really only one way to find out and that's to explore something outside this apartment, am I right?" Cisco rested a hand on Caitlin's shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze to comfort her only to freeze when she changed tack and he looked over at her and then down at the tablet to check the date. "What the frak?" he asked no one in particular; certainly not Caitlin because of course she didn't know when she was the one who pointed it out to begin with. Eyes widening and brows lifting as his jaw went just slightly slack, Cisco nodded. "Yeah, no, we're definitely on the same page and, apparently the same car on the Crazy Train." He pinched the bridge of his nose and then let his hand drop away from his face again. "...so what do we do, you think? Knock on doors and ask people if they woke up in their apartments with no clue what was going on and with some ridiculous letter stating the actual impossible or...?" Any way they looked at this, it didn’t make sense. “No, you’re right. It does seem excessive. It just seems less insane to me than alternate realities.” Either way you looked at it, there were too many variable that did not add up, or make sense. “If it was Thawne, at least then we would have some idea of who we were dealing with.” The letter offered to insight about who or what was responsible for their current situation. Given recent events at home, Thawne seemed like a place to start. Heading out to explore something outside the apartment was the only way they might get more answers. She doubted in here was any safer than out there. Except a few months had passed since she had last been outside. “I suppose if we’re considering accepting the idea that this is a parallel universe, we can’t be that surprised by a little time difference? Seeing as we already know that the later is possible?” In her mind, the only thing she was thinking was wake up, just wake up, please let this be the worst nightmare of all time. “I guess so.” she shrugged, not exactly having the right answer for what to do next. This was a pretty new situation. “I wonder if there’s anything else on the tablet though. Shouldn’t there be another reason for it? If they wanted us to have a welcome message, they could have played it on TV, installed a PA system, or anything. Why give us tablets?” Caitlin did have a point there. It was a lot easier to accept the idea that this was another well thought-out distraction meant to keep them at bay so that they couldn’t support Barry when he needed them than it was to accept that they were breaking quantum physics and everything it stood for. “Either way, we’re screwed to some capacity,” he sighed. “The latter is possible for Barry, because he can run so fast; not for us,” he pointed out, but the fact of the matter was, they were in New York City, a few months later than they’d been in Central City where they’d started when they’d last remembered. Cisco wasn’t entirely sure he was ready to accept the alternate universe explanation that the letter had given, especially since there was no apparent sender for it and, beyond that, it had literally disappeared off both the hard drives of both of their devices. He looked back up at Caitlin from the tablet screen still displaying the screen capture he’d taken of the letter and shook his head. “I don’t know, that’s a good point, too…” he agreed. “This thing has a Wi-Fi signal, so that means we can access the internet…” Cisco pulled up the internet browser and typed Cisco Ramon into the search bar. His eyes widened a little at the results and he turned the screen to show Caitlin briefly before tapping on the link that also mentioned the Flash and Arrow. “...uhhh…” “I know it’s possible for Barry, but we didn’t think it was possible for anyone not to long ago. What if someone figured out another way?” That would make sense, wouldn’t it? They had no idea what was going to be possible in the future. Maybe something that Thawne didn’t have access to in their time, something that came after his time, or something he simply did not know about. While Cisco was searching through his tablet, Caitlin was doing the same. Her original thought was to log onto the internet and see how much transportation back to Central City would be, despite the warnings from the letter. But instead of tapping the internet icon she stopped at an icon she did not recognize. It wasn’t for any social media account or application that she ever seen. New ones were always being developed, true, but usually you had to download anything that wasn’t standard. Curious, she selected that one instead, and watched as what appeared to be some sort of message board opened on her screen. There were people talking, using it to communicate with each other. “You have to see this.” she said at the same time Cisco was turning his screen so she could see. Curious, she held out her tablet for him to take and reached for his, eyes dropping to the screen. For a moment, she was silent, jaw falling open. “...this can’t be real.” She scrolled through the content, which was getting more and more alarming as it went. “This can’t be possible.” "Apparently," Cisco agreed, "since this is the wrong date. Unless it's just a glitch, but the exact same glitch on both isn't a glitch at all; it's intentional. We'd need to find a newspaper somewhere to be sure, you know?" he reasoned. But more significant to Cisco than even the date was the fact that he was reading his biography...on an Arrow wikia; a fansite. Even if the Arrow had fans, which he probably did, Cisco didn't think that they'd end up on a wikia, that was for sure. Especially with an actor's name that, when clicked, went to another page stating that he was portraying Cisco on TV shows called Arrow and The Flash. Cisco took Caitlin's tablet in a daze and handed off his own to her. Hers displayed what looked like a common message board, but all of the people on it seemed to be communicating like there was nothing strange going on. With, that was, the occasional "that was weird" or "hello?" type of post. There were women, men; children. While Caitlin was marveling over the wikia, Cisco was going through page after page of the message board. "Caitlin, there's a lot of people on this thing..." Blinking, he looked back up at her. "Should we put up a message and ask if anybody else got a letter like the ones we got, you think?" It didn’t take long for Caitlin for forget about the message board in favor of what was now in front of her. From ‘Cisco’s page’ she was able to see her own name, listening her as his co-worker. Her name being hyperlinked, of course meant she had to click on it. Which brought her to her very own page that had way too much information about her life. She knew the Government took extreme measure to spy on them, but this was a new level of disturbing. “Why does this list me as the wife of Ronnie!?” she exclaimed suddenly, throwing up her free hand in exasperation, before immediately looking guilty. “Not the point, I know.” Despite the fact that this was happening, she still had a wedding on the brain. “Huh?” she mumbled, looking up from the screen to Cisco, “Oh, yeah.” she agreed with a nod. “I mean that would make sense. There’s an icon on the tablet that lead me directly to those message boards, so it has to be significant, right?” despite the content of this wiki being very concerning, she clicked the button at the bottom of the tablet to take her back to the home screen. “Here, right there. Yours has one too.” “Well, you’re supposed to get married tomorrow our time and we’re months ahead this place’s time…” Cisco replied, giving a shrug. “I see you’ve found the one with you on it. It’s like mine, right? Too much information? You know a wikia is a website that fans make, right? Like there’s a Star Wars wikia and Star Trek, Big Bang Theory; all of it, they’re just like Wikipedia only specific to fandom,” he explained. “...we’re the subjects of fandom, oh God…” Shaking his head as if to push away the thought of it — Cisco had experience with fandoms; he wasn’t ashamed to fanboy some of his favorite comics and sci-fi stuff, so the fact that he’d had exposure to the way those people worked… ...but then again… “We’re the subjects of fandom!” he said with a little too much appreciation for the fact that they were suddenly just as cool to everyone wherever this world was as The Flash was to everyone in Central City. He looked over at Caitlin again suddenly when she showed him where to find the network. “Okay…” he went to his home screen as well and tapped on the icon she’d indicated, pulling up the message board on his own. “...so, you wanna do it or me? I feel like you’re hotter and you’ll get more responses, but…” his voice trailed off and he had the grace to look sheepish. “Just saying.” The fact that Cisco would somehow find a way to be excited about being part of a fandom should not surprise her. But it did not stop her from arching an eyebrow and sending him a ‘Really? Really?!’ kind of look. There was far more information than what she was comfortable with on here, and that wasn’t counting all the parts that clearly outed Barry as The Flash, and likely outed every other masked vigilante that they knew of. “We’re the subjects of some serious privacy violation.” she retorted, though she was too distracted by everything to actually be annoyed. Caitlin shook her head, ignoring the comment about her being hotter. That should be irrelevant when you were searching for help. Though the sad part was, she knew it wasn’t. “You’re apparently more excited about the fictional thing. Your terrible one liners might attract just as much attention.” But her fingers were already moving to the link that would allow her to put up a new post. She didn’t want to waste time debating over who might get more responses. “Lets hope this actually gets us somewhere…” and she started typing. |