TILE - 14 scenery & stuff

(Techno babble here we come!)

On its own initiative the mediator had begun to indoctrinate his stasis subject to become someone named Zefram Cochran in order to merge him into the timeline that could come under attack in the near future and of which the outcome was uncertain.

"Hey Charlie, how's it going?" The cheerful voice of another school boy greeted him as they gathered in the auditorium for attendance.
"Why do you call me Charlie? My name is Zefram!"
"Yes but who would want a name like that?
Are you Jewish? Everyone here knows you by your nickname so I'm afraid you're stuck with it!"

An unkind math teacher had called him 'a proper Charlie' because of his class work, the man had put it up on the board for his classmates to laugh at. In answer to a test paper with the command to Find X he'd circled the X on the diagram of a triangle and written 'Here it is.'

After that incident the nickname had stuck. 'Charlie' was normally the top student in most classes which hadn't made him popular in any case. Add to that his distaste for all forms of sport, especially football and Zefram Cochran was always going to be the victim of unkind jests as Charlie the weird kid with a Jewish name.

In actual fact his nickname Charlie didn't upset him at all as he would turn it against his tormentors by affecting a Boston accent and drawling that "The name's Charles to my friends old fellow, do try to remember that, it should be easier for you as its one syllable."



Was it simple coincidence that these two were so similar?

Both were genius level intellects, unconventional in appearance and behavior through a shared contempt for the cultural mores they found themselves immersed in. The fact that there was almost a century separating their respective timelines made no difference since the stasis field allowed the boy Charles to perceive only what its own thoughts validated.

As far as he knew, Charles was still hard at work on his spaceship project that is when he wasn't at school and it was this memory that the mediator used to draw heavily upon to create the transitional illusions necessary to have a replacement for Zefram Cochran if needed.

This was by no means necessary unless or until the potential of a forthcoming Eugenics War should claim the life of the builder of humanity's first warp drive capable starship. Zefram Cochran was far too brilliant for his own safety's sake in a paranoid society that seemed hell bent on making intelligence a crime against humanity.