2nd Floor Common Room, Tuesday Evening

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

Will had a stackful of books with him but they were, rather uncharacteristically, being ignored as he'd figured out how to turn on the television device. Rather by accident, as he'd done so by sitting on the small rectangular box with the push-buttons.

Tentative poking at the buttons had caused the picture to change rapidly, which was interesting and he did want to find out more about how it was possible to control a device remotely but the second he'd caught sight of a room full of machinery on the screen, he stopped pressing the buttons and settled in to watch a truly fascinating programme. As it turned out, this particular episode happened to be about 'carburetors', which were apparently a key component in the mechanised vehicles like the one he'd ridden to the school on.

Comments

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

Bruce being Bruce, the first thing that caught his eye when he walked into the common room were the books. "What are you reading?" Bruce asked whoever was going to answer. It was a more interesting question to him than asking about the carburetors. After all, he knew how it was made already.

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"The eradication of smallpox, the discovery of harmful sensitivities to food, the development of colour photography, the advent of the mobile phone, and ballistic fingerprinting." Among other things.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"That's an eclectic mix," Bruce said. It had to be time travel. "Is that for a class?"

No way it wasn't time travel.

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"A class?" William echoed. "No, no- this is. Purely for my own leisure." He had an interesting definition of leisure.

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"I understand. I have a fairly diverse library in my room," Bruce said. "If you ever need a book about local flora and fauna, just ask."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"I may well take you up on that." He glanced at his stack of current material. "...Eventually."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"Any time. Look for me on the fifth floor. I'm Bruce," Bruce said, holding a hand out to shake.

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"William Murdoch," the handshake, at least, was formal enough to make up for the lack of a last name. "Always a pleasure to meet someone else with an interest in learning."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

In Bruce's case it was less and interest and more of an obsession that he should probably talk to someone about but never will. 'Interest' definitely sounded nicer in public, though. "You'll be happy to know that there are more than a few people like that here. It's fortunate, really, considering this is a school."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"My last school was filled to the brim with lads who would rather have been anywhere else," William pointed out. Of course, his last school had also been an orphanage, so it wasn't exactly an accurate measure.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

Bruce's last school had been a dojo. Everyone wanted to learn how to kick people in the face better, but that was only reasonable and made it an apple to the oranges that were actual schools. "I'm guessing your last school wasn't much like Fandom, though."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"Not in the least," Will admitted with a bit of a smile. "Well, I suppose one could say it was located on an island, but beyond that small technicality Montreal and Fandom have very little in common."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"And here I thought Gotham City was going to be one of the biggest differences between Fandom and an Earth city," Bruce noted. "At least both of those cities are primarily English-speaking."

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"There is that," William acknowledged. "Although it's also possible to go about one's daily life in Montreal without knowing a word of French." Not that that was the case with William, who'd set himself to mastering the language with his usual intensity the moment the nuns had dropped him off at St. Patrick's. "Gotham? I'm going to assume you don't mean the one in England, because although your American accent is hardly conclusive, as far as I am aware it could barely claim village status."

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"No, the one in New York," Bruce said. "Although that's only in my world. Elsewhere it's in different states, or doesn't exist at all."

He always liked to see how people reacted to a statement like that.

[faithandscience.livejournal.com]

"Washington Irving used it as a nickname for New York City in his writings, I believe," William mused. "In your world? Are you saying that this island draws together not only people from various times, but various parallel realities?" It was a phenomena he'd not heard of outside of fiction. But then, three days ago, so had time travel.

[willbethenight.livejournal.com]

"There have been people from at least three distinct versions of Gotham City - which is separate from New York City - here," Bruce explained. "I'm known in all of them. And in one of them, I'm alive during the 1960s."

"Or in other words, yes."