Dreamland// P. Parker

12. A Wise Man Named Tony Once Said...

Tony's drawing above ^

Friday, October 27, 2017.

"Not too close, kid. I'm concentrating," Tony poked his tongue out between his lips. "And if you accidentally knock me, your suit is toast."

Peter apologized and sat still on top of the lab table.

Ned and I peaked over Tony's shoulder as he tinkered with the inner workings of Peter's suit. Once we had entered the lab, Tony didn't waste any time and began tinkering. As he began to look at the suit, he started talking to the air.

"FRIDAY, play some jammers for me," he asked, grabbing a tool and adjusted his glasses.

"Right away, sir," a female's voice boomed through the room. I looked over at Ned in confusion.

Peter butted in. "It's his AI."

Tony glanced over his shoulder with a smirk. "And there's plenty more where that came from."

From the speakers, a distortion guitar and a loud tap of the drums echoed throughout the room. Ned and I were impressed, and I tapped my foot to the beat of the song. I took him for a classic rock kind of guy. After all, he was wearing a band shirt.

"That's so cool!" Ned exclaimed.

Tony started to adjust his glasses and talked to them. I furrowed my eyebrows.

"Is he...talking to his glasses?" I asked Peter, who sat next to me.

"Another AI," Tony said dismissively and continued to mumble to himself.

We had been there for a good twenty minutes when he jumped immediately from his concentration, making Ned and I almost fall back in shock. Peter watched Tony as his eyes lit up.

"The suit isn't toast, don't worry," he reassured Peter and turned to me. "Ms. Laney, I've cracked the code." He elonged the last syllable and stood up straight from the work station. He spoke to his AI. "Be a dear and turn the down the music?" 

The music lowered, and he grinned cheesily. "Isn't she a doll?"

"What's going on?" Peter asked in anticipation. Tony nodded his head and made a beeline to his futuristic-looking whiteboard. We followed slowly behind him.

"Interdimensional is one way to call it," he said, grabbing a marker. "It's incomparable. A jump through worlds, if you will." Tony pulled the cap from the marker with his teeth. The lid hung loosely in his mouth as he began to scribble on the whiteboard.

"Your being that you remember, the world with your mother and your bubbly best friend," he said with matter-of-factly. "Made a jump through time. It can be a jump through time or a switch through dimensions. Either way, you've jumped."

"Why?" I asked.

"That's the tricky question. But it's one I can solve," he said and focused intensely on his scribbling. "Somehow, both timelines have come together." 

I watched and listened to him speak. I saw him draw out two circles and a thick line between the two. The bright green ink wasted no time getting on the ends of his fingers as he would erase lines or mistakes. The two circles had arrows over and under them (pointing in the same direction), indicating that they were cycling repetitively. They passed through the thick line he had drawn. Around the drawing, he hastily wrote down formulas. His handwriting was messy as multiple equations displayed themselves in front of us. I stared at a few I could recognize.

He took the lid out of his mouth and placed it back onto the marker. He turned to us and pointed at an equation.

"Your two subconsciouses have fused together to create a greater sub-conscience, to put it lightly. When the two of you fell, you hit your head at the exact same time," he exaggerated. "Exact."