October the 17th, 2025 - Verus Tempus

Private Investor Meeting, Room L26, Building B

"After several years of development, and many breakthroughs in-" The bald sheen of the well-dressed man sitting opposite broke her attention. "W-w-we h-have prototyped the technology that you have very graciously funded us to do!" A cough. The uneasy looks of her coworkers. Why God, of all days, did Adri have to get in a fucking car crash, she silently protested. The clock ticking. Another cough. "When you came to us here at REDACTED three years ago, you asked a simple question: "What temporal phenomena can we uncover with a blank check?" and day and night, we have been working tirelessly to answer that for you!" A drop of sweat. The hum of air conditioning. A quick glance at Paul was more than enough to tell her that this soapbox speech was dragging on too long. That, and the judging glare of the face for the mysterious corporation that had been funding their work for the past three years. "On the pedestal before you is our prototypical Low-Entropy Orthogonal Network Interchange System, or LEONIS in short. Capable of transmitting data through an orthogonal time dimension to ours with a current maximum probabilistic distance of about 15 years." A slight scowl of confusion flashed across the man's face. His mouth opened as if to say something, then nothing as he looked down, furrowed in thought. "So it's a form of time travel?" The man spoke slowly, as if he had never gotten a debrief on what exactly the meeting entailed. "W-well conceptually, the electromagnetic waves themselves travel through time, as they don't really have any notion of mass, so they can be excited in such a way that, just as radio can pass through walls, they can pass through... so to say, the confining temporal walls of our unidimensional time stream." She spoke each word more carefully than the last, trying to sum up years of technical jargon into a neat explanation that would appease the man before her. Adrianna definitely must've come up with something like it for her presentation. But she doesn't leave any goddamn notes, she thought to herself. "So then there's no actual travelling happening, right? It's limited to communication through time?" He questioned, somewhat incredulously. Several weak nods bobbed around the room. Clearly the device in front of him did not match the expectations he had come into this meeting with. "That would be somewhat correct." she asserted, a pit in her stomach formed as she knew what the man would ask next. "Somewhat?" He asked. Several glances shot around the room fast enough that it could've been missed if you didn't know what to look for. "LEONIS allows communication with orthogonal timestreams to our own", she stated slowly, quickly adding "T-that is to say that in a certain subspace of equally probable superpositions our universe can take on at any given instant, the signals ignore whatever boundary seperates our current continuous experince from a different one." she continued "It's bounded by the fact that the signal range is directly proportional to the difference in probabalistic distance of the timestream we wish to communicate with and our own." "Which we have successfully tested!" Anne helpfully added. Over the room's speakers, a clear *ping* sounded and everyone looked to Randal, who was helming the computer in the back corner of the room. "It looks like Adrianna was able to send a brief deck over from the hospital." he announced, looking for approval from the speaker to display it as an aid to the flailing presentation. The speaker quickly bade a single nod while once again trying to catch her words. "It's a-uhm-.. I know that was a lot of technical nonsense, but I think we can make everything make sense if you'll turn your attention to the screen," she said, pointing to the large flat screen display hung on the wall behind her. Its warm glow greeting the room with a cheerful: "Project: LEONIS, The Temporal Analysis Division welcomes you!" Years of theory compressed into several short, detail compromising graphics and statements flashed on the screen. Despite the initial seeming confusion, the man's eyes never seemed to glaze over, the way her project's safety manager did whenever she shared a new discovery. Several notes were taken, and as the presentation concluded, the man had a swath of questions ranging from elementary to the absurdly technical that only Anne and her were able to confidently answer. "How are you able to confirm that sent and received signals are going to, and come from the intended target superposition, and not any of the possible receivers along its path?" The man quizzed, spoken in a softer tone than before. Anne chomped at the bit to answer, after all, it had been her specialty to develop a checksum that solved this exact problem. After a dozen more involved questions and their detailed answers, the room sat silent. The device sat silently on the table, connected by a braided cable to a laptop whose fans hissed just above the noise of the AC. "Would you like a demonstration?" The speaker asked, itching to break the quiet before her. The man replied, "Of course." with a hint of eagerness. "I do want to warn you, the method of electromagnetic excitation LEONIS uses will cause some sensory distortions on transmit and receive. You may notice that colors and sounds shift and change as the signal leaves our timestream." the speaker warned, gaining an understanding nod from the man sat across her "Are there any shifts that interest you?" she continued "I recommend that you stay within a year's time, as our laptop here has to crunch the numbers itself." "You said that the person who was supposed to present today got into a car accident?" the man clarified. "Y-yes." the speaker confirmed weakly. "I'd like to congratulate her on a successful recovery 3 months from now," he stated. "Right!" The speaker scurried over to the laptop, punching in the parameters needed to locate a timestream with a 3 months' shift, coded for Adri's personal receiver. She quickly wrote a message, speaking aloud as she typed "Dear Adrianna, I'd like to congratulate you on your speedy recovery. Signed-" she looked up. "Naledi" he filled in. "Naledi," she repeated. Tapping the last key forcefully. The fans of the laptop began to whine louder, slowly ramping up until they became a small roar. "This should take about three minutes" she warned, her voice raised to be heard. Five minutes later, the laptop's fans died down, and a faint green light shone on the speaker from its screen. "Ok" she said, blinking rapidly and pressing a few more keys. "There." she surmised, as the screen glowed a soft white. A few in the room began to close their eyes, seeming to prepare for whatever came next. Naledi sat unfazed looking directly at the woman standing behind the podium. The hum of the air conditioning seemed to sound out of tune, like it was beginning to run out of power. The cream-colored orange peel walls began to appear more and more pink, like the warm tone of an embarrassed blush. The sound of the wall clock's ticks sounded thicker, as if a grandfather one had taken its place, pendulum knocking the ratchet back with each second. The walls turned a desaturated red now, the fluorescents seemed to be burning cold as the hum of the vent above them disappeared into the muddy rumbles of the floor. Then, a flicker of blue accompanied by a chirp and it was over. The room, unassuming as ever, sat just as it had when the building was constructed. The employees opened their eyes at different speeds, some grinning to themselves while others looked slightly sick. Naledi breathed in deeply, lost in thought, "It's done?" he asked. "That's it. Adrianna says: 'Thank you Naledi!' from three months hereafter." the speaker smiled. He gave a quick smile and asked, "How can I be sure that this isnt all one big show put on to appease me?" The speaker's face dropped to dead serious. "You can't. There are an infinite number of these meetings happening at all times. Some of them are scams, others work now but never will again, and others still are just boltzman brains imagining them happening simultaneously. That’s the nature of the space we’re working in Mr. Naledi, the best I can do is stake my reputation on it and go through the sent and recieved checksum derivations with you." she spoke in complete assurance. After a pause, Naledi stood up and walked over to the woman at the head of the room. He glanced at her nameplate before looking at her face, extending a hand. "It's been a pleasure Ms. Reisende." She shook his hand and smiled awkwardly, "The pleasure is mine, thank you for coming out to see us. We hope to continue research for you far into the future!" her eyes smiled at the joke. The man continued to shake her colleagues' hands as he made way to the exit, glancing back at her before walking into the hallway, letting the door shut softly behind him.