IC-Prologue-Time Will Crawl(Bill/Yeager/Rawlings/Harry)

[Mr. Handy]

"Good thinking!" said Amy, rushing over to Harry's side. She gently tilted his head back, cradling it in her arm, and lifted his eyelids with her fingers. Harry's eyes were darting quickly from side to side, not apparently focused on anything in the room.

"Why's he all cockeyed?" asked Charlie.

"REM," she said, nodding. She checked his pulse.

"You mean that band from Illinois he likes? REM Speedwagon?"

"That's REO Speedwagon. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement."

"I can see where it gets the name," said John Yeager. "He's like a cat watching a goddamn tennis match. Why?"

"It just means he's dreaming," said Amy. "Everybody's eyes do that when they dream. Although he just fell asleep a few minutes ago, so he shouldn't have entered REM sleep so fast. Other than that he seems okay, but I have no idea why this happening."

"So how do we wake him up?" asked Charlie.

"Bucket of ice water over the head should do the trick," said Yeager. "How'd he get this way to begin with? He hasn't been sampling the wares, has he?"

"No, of course not! All he had was that chocolate milk from that thermos."

[Philulhu]

"You might wanna check him out before you wake him," said Bill, "And you should start with that", pointing at the flask.

OOC,Can Bill try his own First Aid check?

[Mr. Handy]

OOC,Yes, you can go ahead and roll First Aid.

[Philulhu]

OOC,Balls - done it again, rolled a D10 instead of D100. Still wouldn't have made it though :( [url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2080283/]Bill's first aid roll - is there a doctor in the house? (1d10=8)[/url]

[Mr. Handy]

"Call for a doctor," said John Yeager to Charlie, who picked up his phone and started dialing. Yeager sniffed the thermos. "And how do you know it was chocolate milk?"

"Well, it looked like chocolate milk, Lou," he answered.

"I see. So if I took some crap and baked it to look like a pie, would you eat it?"

"No, but he might." Charlie put the receiver to his mouth. "Yes, we need a doctor down at Police HQ. Detective Headquarters, first floor."

Yeager just shook his head. "What were you thinking, Harry? That thermos was in a backpack full of drugs! There could've been anything in it! Probably have to pump your stomach now."

"We've got a man unconscious. He may need a stomach pump. Drank something he shouldn't have." Charlie covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "He can't hear you, boss."

"Actually, maybe he can," said Amy. "They say that sometimes when you're unconscious you can still hear what's going on around you. There have been patients in hospitals who reported it. Even people in comas who have awakened have said that they heard sounds in the background: beeping machines, ringing telephones, doctors and nurses talking, that sort of thing."

[Philulhu]

Bill started at Officer Cooper's comment. "Yeah, that's what I heard," he said. He paused, "Well, I mean, I heard that's what people have said." 'This is getting more and more bizarre,' he thought to himself, 'It's like my subconscious is trying to tell me what's going on.'

"I need to make a call," Bill said, "Is there a phone somewhere private I can use?"

[Mr. Handy]

"Sure, you can use the one in my office," said John Yeager. He peered into the thermos. "He drank the whole thing. Maybe there's a few drops left, but I doubt it's enough for forensics to get anything useful from. If we want to know what this stuff was, we'll have to find out by squeezing Brian."

"Hang in there, Harry," said Amy Cooper, squeezing his hand. "The doctor's coming. You're going to be all right."

"Okay, thanks," said Charlie Rawlings into the phone's mouthpiece. He hung up. "The doc should arrive in a few minutes." He began packing the drugs back into the backpack.

Yeager led Bill to his office and opened the door for him. Inside was a desk with neatly stacked papers, a blotter, an ashtray, a rotary phone, and various office supplies on top of it. A comfortable-looking leather chair was behind it, and another chair, this one wooden, was in front of the desk. There was a set of shelves lined with books as well as a few bowling trophies. Hanging on one wall was a 1969 calendar open to July, graced by a beautiful bikini-clad young blonde above the actual rows of days, the first 15 of which had been crossed out with a diagonal red line. A movie poster for Coogan's Bluff was on the wall next to the calendar.



"All yours," said Yeager, walking away.

[Philulhu]

Bill waited until Yeagar had left the office and closed the door. He took a close look at the calendar - it certainly looked like it was genuine so he could only presume he was back in 1969. He glanced at the poster and shook his head. He remembered seeing the film in some fleapit moviehouse downtown when it first came out.

Sitting behind the desk, he pulled out the piece of paper which he'd written the phone numbers on. Picking up the phone, Bill dialled the number for the university and asked to be put through to the secretary for Dr. Gregory Anderson.

[Mr. Handy]

OOC,Though Coogan's Bluff came out in October 1968, it's 1969 now. The poster is several months old.

Bill dialed the university's number, and the phone began to ring...and ring...and ring. Nobody was answering.

OOC,[b]Bill[/b], roll Idea.

[Philulhu]

OOC,D'oh! I even checked the date it came out & still got it wrong :( [url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2086946/]Bill's idea roll when he rings the university. (1d100=30)[/url]

[Mr. Handy]

Bill's disorientation over the era in which he seemed to find himself had also made him forget the time of day. It was nearly 8:00 PM, and the University's offices would all be closed. They would reopen tomorrow morning, probably around 8:00 AM.

[Philulhu]

Bill glanced at the clock mentally kicked himself. Working until 9.00pm or later was commonplace to him, but he guessed that the things were - are - different in the 1960's. He replaced the handset in the cradle and sighed.

Wondering what he was going to do next, it occurred to Bill that he didn't know where he lived - had he just been swapped for his past self - or if he had anywhere else to go. And what about money? If he didn't have any current currency, he'd better find a park bench. He pulled his wallet from his pants pocket and tentatively opened it, unsure as to what he might find.

[Mr. Handy]

OOC,Individual professors would probably be working in their own offices late, but [b]Bill[/b] doesn't have their numbers. Departmental offices and the main registrar's office would close around 5:00 PM. It's also summertime, so office hours would be even more limited than during the spring or fall semesters.

Bill found not one but two wallets out of his pocket, in addition to a ring of keys. The first wallet was made of brown leather, somewhat different from the one he had had before all of this started. Inside of it was about $100.00 in cash, mostly notes but also some change. They were almost all dated in the 1950s and 60s, and none were dated later than 1969. The wallet did not have any credit cards or ATM cards, but it did have a Pennsylvania driver's license. There was a small photo of his face in black and white in the corner, looking his current age or perhaps a couple of years younger. The card's expiration date was March 1971, and his date of birth was listed as March 4, 1911. The name on it was William Johns, and it listed his address as an apartment near Rittenhouse Square, a little over a mile to the southwest. It wasn't all that far from Lenny's Bar, in fact. There was also a Social Security card in the same name, as well as a voter registration card and a Selective Service registration card - not that he was in any danger of being drafted at his age.

The second wallet was black and thin. When he unfolded it, he was astonished to see that it contained police identification. On the right side was a gold badge with the number 716, and on the left was a card identifying him as Sergeant Bill Johns of the Philadelphia Police Department.

[Philulhu]

Bill examined the shield carefully, not sure if it was for real or not. 'A cop?' he thought to himself, 'Why the hell would I be a cop?'

None of this was making any sense to him. If he got back to more familiar surroundings, he might start to make sense of it all. He quickly checked the papers on the desk surface then the desk drawers, looking for an internal phone directory that might give him some clue as to where he was based.

[Mr. Handy]

The shield certainly looked authentic, though to Bill it looked old-fashioned, just like everything else in this strange place. The desk drawers were all locked, but there was plenty of paperwork stacked on the desk and in Yeager's In and Out boxes. He started to look through it.

OOC,[b]Bill[/b], roll Spot Hidden.

[Philulhu]

OOC,Bill fails to find his arse with two hands and a map... :( [url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2121190/]Bill's snooping in the office. (1d100=100)[/url]

[Mr. Handy]

Bill spent a few minutes going through the paperwork on the desk. There did not seem to be any organizational method to any of it, and all of it looked like the boring minutiae of police paper work to him. There were memos, incident reports, and arrest reports, but nothing that had anything to do with Brian Anderson and nothing resembling a phone directory that he could see.

OOC,[b]Bill[/b], roll Listen.

[Philulhu]

OOC,Heard it! [url=http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/2123443/]What's that, Scooby? Voices from the office next door? (1d100=7)[/url]

[Mr. Handy]

As he leafed through the stacks of papers, Bill could hear footsteps and voices in the main room.

"Good evening," said an older male voice. "I'm Dr. Howarth. Is this the fellow?"

"Yes, this is Detective Harry Sawyer," said Amy Cooper. "He drank an unknown liquid that he thought was chocolate milk. It was in this thermos."

"Knocked him out cold," said Charlie Rawlings.

"If it wasn't chocolate milk, do you have any idea what it could be?" asked the doctor.

"Well, it was found in a backpack full of drugs," said John Yeager. "Maybe this is a huge speculative leap, but it just might have contained a drug. We've got a man in custody we took it off, so I'm betting he'll know."

"Hmm." Howarth paused. "Can you hear me? I need you to listen carefully. We're trying to wake you up, but it may take some time and we need you to help us. You've got to be strong." There was another pause. "We'd better get him down to Jefferson Hospital and pump his stomach right away. If you can find out what this substance was, that might help with finding a way to counteract it."

"I can sweat it out of that scum, Lou," said Charlie.

"Okay, you do that, Charlie," said John. "I'm going with Harry. Just let me get my coat."

"I'm coming too," said Amy.

Bill heard Yeager's footsteps approaching the door, and he quickly replaced all of the paperwork where he found it. Yeager rapped his knuckles on the door and opened it a second later. "You done with the phone?" he asked, breezing inside. "We're off to the hospital with Harry." He whisked his coat off of a wooden coatrack in a corner of the office and swept it over his shoulders. "If you want to come with, we can talk more."

OOC,[b]Sergeant Charlie Rawlings[/b] is moving to the thread linked below. Please stop reading the current thread at this point, and do not read the posts above the one that the link points to in the new thread. Everyone else remains in the current thread.

Law

[Philulhu]

"Umm, yeah," said Bill, "I'll come with you."