Chapter 5
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“Mobius!”
O.B. greeted the analyst with the same vaguely surprised delight that coloured almost all of his greetings.
“Hey O.B.” Mobius waved to him as he walked over to lean on the cluttered desk, “Got a quick question I wanna run by you.”
“Okay! Go ahead.”
“So, the tempads are working great. Loki and I are sending notes and stuff between us fine, but I wanna know if we can make the time doors bigger.”
“How much bigger?”
Mobius shrugged, “Big enough for a goat.”
Or a person.
O.B. frowned, “How big is a goat?”
That, Mobius didn’t actually know. He hadn’t exactly had regular, close quarters dealings with goats. So he mimed something about the length of those he had seen in Pompeii, although he hadn’t actually been looking at the goats. There had been a very distracting, very excited, Latin-speaking god to draw most of Mobius’ focus.
“Huh,” O.B. remarked.
It wasn’t a pessimistic, we’re all gonna die, kind of ‘huh’. More of a promising, maybe this could work sort of sound.
Which was great.
“So, can we do it?” Mobius asked hopefully, bolstered by that promising noncommittal sound.
“No.”
“What?” Mobius’ heart sank, “Why not?”
“Well, there’s a reason the time doors are so small and unstable.”
“Which is?”
“You know how the tempads are linked to your temporal auras?”
“Yes, I remember that.’
“Well, my theory is that Loki’s temporal aura is conflated with all of the branches of the time tree, making it similar to that when he arrived at the TVA, but not sufficiently so for it to serve as a stable anchoring point. We need something else to anchor the time door to on his end in order to make it bigger.”
“Like what?”
“Well, we can’t send anything living through a time door that unstable without it turning into spaghetti. And things that are not living don’t have strong enough temporal auras. Not usually, but such objects do theoretically exist.”
Mobius sighed inwardly, “Okay, and what kinda object do I need for that? Something really old, or…”
“Something with a lot of history. Enough history for it to have a strong and distinctive stable temporal aura. Find me something like that and we can use it to anchor the time door.”
Mobius nodded, disheartened but unsurprised that it wasn’t going to be as easy as he had hoped.
But it wasn’t impossible. He just had to find something really old with a lot of history that he could take without messing up timelines. There were loads of apocalypses and loads of old stuff at each.
Actually that was the problem.
There was so much stuff, he didn’t really know where to start.
<The goat’s gonna take a while.>
Mobius began a new note, sitting at a desk in the archives with several folders on apocalypses in front of him.
<O.B. says we need a way to make the time door between us more stable since your temporal aura’s all messed up and weird.>
He sent the note through, on the tray.
A time door opened, the tray returned with no new note. The door closed. A second later it opened and a scrunched up note flew through, missing his head this time and landing on the floor behind him.
<Rude.>
Mobius smirked.
<Hey, I’m just conveying his message.>
<Messed up and weird? Those were O.B.’s very technical chosen words?>
<Pretty much. He has a solution though.>
<I’m on the edge of my seat with anticipation.>
The task abruptly left Mobius’ mind, filled with another question that for the moment felt more pressing.
<Do you have a seat? Are you sitting down?>
<Yes and yes.>
<Is it comfy? I mean, because these archives chairs are surprisingly comfy, which isn’t great for making you focus on work.>
<I suspect the inclination to sleep in the archives comes more from the monotonous way those reports are written.>
<Sure. Let me just talk to all the analysts and hunters and try to get them to start editorialising their paperwork.>
<See that you do. Now, you were about to tell me O.B.’s plan.>
<Right. Well, we gotta find an object with a lot of history that’s got a stable and distinctive temporal aura of its own. We lock the tempad to that instead of you.>
<Inanimate objects have only very weak temporal auras. Finding something suitable isn’t going to be easy.>
<Since when did you care about whether or not something’s easy?>
<I was merely warning you. Might require some exercising of your sharp analytical skills.>
<Well, I’m in the archives, ready to go. Any thoughts on where to start?>
<What really matters is the living environments to which the object has been exposed. The lives it’s witnessed.>
<The stories it’s been part of?>
<Precisely.>
<And we need to take it from an apocalypse to not mess up any branches. What about Ragnarok?>
Mobius could send Loki something that might make him feel more at home.
<Maybe. But the most likely suitable objects would have been in the weapons vault. And, as I’m certain you already know, if you go too soon, the Loki of that timeline would notice a missing relic. Go too late and it would be impossibly dangerous. Surtr would have risen and the vault moments away from being destroyed.>
There was one relic Loki might not notice missing because Mobius knew he actively avoided looking towards it. The casket of ancient winters. But Mobius wasn’t going to even suggest sending that to Loki. It had too much painful significance to him.
Although, something with a lot of significance to Loki could be the answer.
<What about something you repeatedly touched while you were timeslipping? Would that work the same? Or would it be reset each iteration of time?>
<Mobius! You’re a genius! We’re looking in the wrong place!>
<Thanks? Now explain.>
<Send me your Jet-Ski magazine.>
<That’s a demand, not an explanation, Loki.>
<It’s just a theory. But the way that time works, or doesn’t work, in the TVA has the potential to imprint stronger temporal auras on objects than in a timeline. You’ll have to take my word on that, unless you’d like to spend half a century studying quantum mechanics. Your magazine has existed in the TVA for a long time. But it wasn’t from there. It’s existed in a timeline, and in the TVA, and it has been important to you. And to me. It should, theoretically, have a stable and distinctive temporal aura that we can use.>
<And when did you become an expert in quantum mechanics?>
Mobius didn’t really need an answer. It was obvious. Somewhere in all the cumulative time Loki had spent timeslipping and trying to save them, he probably had picked up more than a little of O.B. and Timely’s knowledge.
Mobius didn’t need an answer and he didn’t get one.
<It’s worth a try. I promise I will get you another to replace it. Have O.B. read the temporal aura, and send it here.>
<You don’t need to replace it. It’s just a magazine. It’s all yours if it will let me go to you.>
Mobius scribbled out the last line quickly.
Loki hadn’t exactly said he would be able to go there, and Mobius wasn’t going to let himself get his hopes up. If this was all he had with Loki forever, it was okay. It was better than the silence and grief. It wasn’t what Mobius wanted, but he could live with it.
<Thank you. Send tiny Mobius too.>
<What is tiny Mobius?>
<You know exactly what tiny Mobius is.>
<I know a tiny Loki. No Mobius. I could have O.B. make a dashing little figure of old Mobius if you like.>
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“Alright, I have the temporal aura!” O.B. said at last, passing the well-read magazine across to Mobius, “Send the magazine first. Then, I will add its temporal aura to Loki’s on your tempad. By my calculations, it should allow the door to open approximately three times the size as before. Big enough for a goat.”
Mobius nodded and placed the magazine, the small figurine of the person in a suit, and a note on the tray.
<Let’s give this a try.>
He sent it through, handed the tempad to O.B. and waited with a slight anxiety he tried to ignore. If this worked, it was one step closer to the possibility that he could reach Loki. If it didn’t, that hope would become just a bit more impossible.
But impossible had never deterred Loki, and Mobius was sure as hell not about to let it deter him. Not from this.
“Done!” O.B. thrust the tempad back towards him, “Try it!”
Mobius did.
The timedoor stuttered into existence. It opened, flickered for a moment, vanished.
“Okay. One more adjustment.”
O.B. grabbed the device back, disappeared back into the floor beside the desk, and reappeared shortly after.
“Try again.”
This time, the door opened, flickered once, but stayed. It was bigger. About four foot tall, two foot wide, and stable for almost ten seconds before it disappeared.
Not perfect, but better.
Much better.
Another door opened, similar in size to the one he had created, and the tray slid through.
On it, the tiny suited figure.
Riding a toy Jet-Ski.
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