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The door opens, and a very dirty, disheveled Helena comes into Milliways. Her clothes look more than a bit like Lara Croft, and a multi-coloured shawl is tied around her waist. She looks around, confused, then leans down and picks up a stray paper covered in math and other notes. Muttering to herself, she opens the door to an apartment on the other side. Without a word, she walks through.

[ooc: Please feel free to react, or if you really feel like catching her, talk to Helena. She's under the influence of a fairly powerful Artifact, so she is going to be quite off. All tags will be answered tomorrow, as I'm on my way to bed.]

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"Helena...that's a different look." One for sore eyes, though. It's been a long week for Howard, what with D-Day happening and all.

"Howard..." There's a memory, a flirtation, a better time many years ago before everything went to hell. "It's been a while."

"A few weeks, I think. Have to say, it's been hard to keep track of the Bar. Things at home are...active." He smiles at her. "How are you?"

"It's... been quite a lot longer for me, I'm afraid." She's able to crack a small smile. "Things... well, frankly, things rather went to hell."

"Care to tell me about it? Over a drink, perhaps?" He could use a break. And the company.

And damn, but she looks good in that outfit. Inappropriate for many things, good.

She glances toward the door, but somehow there's a moment of peace, a moment of clarity, and she smiles a bit more. "Oh, alright, darling. I dare say I can take a few moments."

"Time stands still for me out there. When I go back, it will still be June 8." Which is fine. He doesn't think he would want to skip ahead. Or neglect his duties.

"I think time stands still or at least it did before. I came in via a different manner than I had in the past." She sighs. "I was in Egypt, thus the outfit."

"Because of the heat.

"But surely you'll scandalize someone there. If not the natives, the British who run the place." They did run Egypt then, he thinks.

Helena laughs. "Oh, darling. It's been over a hundred years for me. There was a bit of a faff, and I lost about a hundred years. Clothing has changed quite a lot when I wasn't around. Besides, I've never worried about scandalizing people. It's... rather fun."

"A hundred years..."

Blink.

"You traveled in time?" He knows she's HG Wells and all. But...really?

She sighs, a deep, painful sigh that implies so many things. "Not exactly, darling. It is quite complicated." There was statuary involved.

"It's always complicated. Science isn't science if it's simple.

"So when exactly are you?"

He is at once curious and confused. He really was just expecting a little change or two in her life.

"Two thousand twelve, actually. I've been de... or, shall we say in the future for about a year and a half. It was quite the adjustment, let me tell you." She attempts a smile.

"I would say that I can imagine. Only I can't. I've been there briefly, and it was hard enough just visiting.

"But I'm glad that you seem to be okay in any case."

Howard orders a scotch on the rocks.

Helena orders a gin and tonic. Her drink tastes haven't changed much over the years.

There's a faint look of pain that crosses her face, but she hides it behind a smile. "It's fascinating, actually, all of the new technologies. There are this little notepads where you write important messages on them, and affix them to things!"

"On paper, you mean?" He would have thought that the computational devices you can write on would have been the first thing any inventor would notice.

But Helena is a bit eccentric, after all.

"Well, yes. I thought of many inventions in my time, even things like computers, but I never thought of something like that." She smiles. It is more than a bit eccentric, but somehow the little things that she never dreamed of are more exciting than the things that she figured would happen.

Edited (login/icon fail) 2013-06-09 19:05 (UTC)

"And now all the things I was being coy about from my work are old news to you, and you can't tell me that much about your inventions, or anyone else's." He sounds both disappointed and relieved.

"Alas, that does seem to be the case." She sips her drink thoughtfully. "I have not had much chance to create much new in the past couple years. Things have been more than slightly chaotic."

"But you've adapted? Found some footing?" Could Howard do that? Adjust to a new world where everyone he ever knew is gone, and where his skills are ancient at best?

"I guess you could say that, darling." She fusses a bit with the shawl around her waist. "It has taken quite a while to adapt to the times, but I am managing."

"And can I ask what you are doing in Egypt?" It's not a place high on his list of sites to visit.

But that's mainly due to the war.

"It is a work thing, darling. The Warehouse I work with, well, it's an ancient organization. A previous incarnation was near Alexandria, and some students found it and woke it up." And then were killed for their trouble. "We had to go and shut it down."

"So you miss a century. And still have a job.

"I suppose I could hope for that. A couple of people have indicated my company is still around." Which is not the same thing, but Howard is trying hard to make it all make sense.

"The Warehouse is very protective of her people. Once you're a Warehouse agent, it takes quite a lot to break that bond." A bond that she's pretty sure she broke, but somehow repaired. "It is a very special place."

"Then you're rather lucky. No corporation above a certain size can be run that way. And with the war, my company is past that size now." Not that he ever ran it like it was family.

"Well, no. The Warehouse is no corporation, darling. I do not know what it would actually be, as it's also no government organization." She shrugs a bit, fiddling a bit more with the shawl. "It's difficult to explain. We find and contain dangerous objects."

"I think you told me about that, a century ago.

"And sometimes there are things, groups, organizations that aren't any of the above, I guess. Their own thing. I like having a company, but it might be fun having a Something Else." For a little while, anyway.

"I probably did, darling. I'm... not at my best right now." Understatement of the year, Helena. "The Warehouse is quite singular in its organization. A group of Regents, a head Regent, and a Caretaker, who takes care of the Warehouse herself." She pauses. "It's... quite complicated."

"It's fine. I don't know if my focus is all it should be, either, today.

"And I deal with a change of command. Complicated is the norm."

"Whatever is the matter, darling?" Ah! Something else Helena can concentrate on. "What is going on?"

"The biggest invasion in the history of mankind.

"Which I can tell you about without affecting history now," he adds.

"I suspect the expression 'D-Day' is one your new era will use and remember."

Helena winces. One of the things that she did when she first was debronzed was to catch up on the hundred years she missed. "Ah. Yes. I did read about that." And the bombing of Britain, and all of the horror that happened in places she knew well.

"It's a bit frustrating at the moment. We're getting the broad strokes from the radio and the papers. But the people from my unit, for lack of a better one, haven't reported in as far as I know.

"And a lot of my company's product is being used, and I won't know for a long while how well it performed."

Hard to say what has him more nervous.

"Oh, dear. I am sorry." She winces, but it softens into a smile. "I am certain, Howard, that whatever you come up with will work." She knows inventors, and Howard is one of the more serious ones she's met.

Hard not to return that smile.

"Thank you for the reassuring words, Helena. But you know that an inventor never rest until the invention has been thoroughly tested.

"And not even then." Some of the planes involved in the air phase of the invasion are already slated for improvement in the next three months.

"Oh, I know that all too well, Howard. I have tested and re-tested and re-made many things before I was at least mostly satisfied." She smiles again. "Even then, there are things I have made that I do not believe are completely right."

"There is nothing that can't be made better." An axiom that he will pass on to his son someday, "Though I suppose at some point the perfect does become the enemy of the good."

"Well, I guess if you get so caught up in wanting to make things perfect, then you cannot innovate and create new things." There are a few people in her past who were a bit stuck on perfection.

"Any chance you can remind of that in a year or two?" His intel - yes, he has his own intel from a few sources - says the war will be over in 18 months, give or take. After which, it's time to invent again. He hopes.

"I'll keep that in mind, Howard." She smiles. "Life also gets in the way of things sometimes." Oh, does it.

"It does. But as long as life is not the same as war, I am looking forward to it."

"From what I know, Howard, war is hell, but life is sometimes little better, alas." She finishes her drink, and puts a hand on the shawl around her waist. "I do so apologize, but I must go. I need to see a man about my daughter."

[ooc: I am sooooooory for cutting the thread shortish, but Helena is... not with it, alas. She will be back in the bar later this week.]

"Oh, yes. Of course." Daughter?

So mysterious. And intriguing, isn't she?

"I will see you later."

<small.[ooc: not a problem at all]

"Of course, darling." Helena puts her glass on the bar, clutches the paper that she picked up on her way in, and walks out the door.

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