Franklin Salisbury Recruitment

Someone was talking to him. Franklin knew that much. How he knew, however, was a bit beyond him, because he couldn't actually see or hear anything at the moment. *Why is that?* he wondered.

*Okay, quick check. Arms hurt, legs hurt, chest hurts, everything else hurts (should've started with that, I guess), blood on the right side of my head, I think I have a nosebleed, I can't see much beyond a bright blur - probably caused by exposure to light, there's a ringing in my ears... but I think my hearing's starting to recover-*

"-you do?"

"What?" he said - or shouted, he couldn't be sure right now.

"what did yOU DO?!", the voice shouted, Franklin's other ear getting back to work mid-sentence.

"No need to yell," he grumbled. *Must be that fat director guy, here to complain.* "Okay, just let me retrace my steps for a moment. We were working on a laser communication experiment, but there were problems with stabilizing the magnetic fields, and then two groups of weirdos apparently got in some sort of shootout outside, because the next thing you know, Brady got hit in the shoulder, and *something* broke the coolant tanks." *Ah, looks like my eyesight's starting to return. Glad it wasn't permanent.*

"With unstable magnetic fields and no more coolant, it was obvious we should disable the device, but Brady was unconscious and my path was blocked by the liquid CO2 spraying from a pipe that also got hit, so my only chance was bleeding the energy somewhere it couldn't set stuff on fire. I figured a 60-degree angle would suffice, grabbed my tools, and then - ah."

"*Ah?*", the voice grumbled, as shapes and a large field of blue began to spring from the blur.

"Okay, in my defense, one of the coolant tank pieces hit me in the head, so I was slightly concussed. I forgot to loosen the C3 node and readjust the J5 modulator, so... well, instead of creating a leak that some of the stored energy could exit through, I actually made it release all the energy in a single burst. Which, if I have to guess from the blue I'm seeing, took out a large part of the building, and-"

Franklin blinked. Then again. Again, several times in rapid succession. No luck.

"You're not the director."

"You think?" the menacing creature in front of him said.

...

For a few seconds, Franklin was silent.

"You don't look like I expected," he finally offered.

"And how did you THINK I would look?" the creature asked.

"I don't know - more English-looking, I guess? Like a civilized gentleman, just here to do his job and reap my soul. You, however, look like a football player, or a bouncer - the type you send for people who may try to put up a fight."

The fluctuating shadowy creature in front of him certainly looked muscular for some reason, yes, even though it lacked a physical form. It chuckled, which was not a pleasant sound - if anything, it was the kind of sound that nails on chalkboard aspire to be. "Your soul, Franklin Salisbury? Do you think I'm Death?"

"Well yeah, obviously," Franklin protested. "Because I ache too much to be asleep or comatose, and I doubt I'd hallucinate you, so either I'm dead or-"

He stopped, then tried again. "Or..."

"Or I'm very much real and you're in a world of trouble, I think you're trying to say."

Franklin swallowed. "Crap."

The creature reached out a shadowy arm towards him - then hissed and withdrew it when an energy blast hit it. Franklin followed the creature’s glare and saw two men in steampunk outfits, aiming weird weaponry at it - and shaking in their boots. *If you're so scared, why shoot at it, you idiots?*

The creature took two steps towards the men and grew three feet in height. "I'll give you a 10-second headstart," it growled. The men turned around and ran.

*10 seconds, huh? More than enough to rip me to shreds or do whatever abominations from other dimensions do, I guess.* A tentative attempt revealed that although Franklin could definitely still move his limbs, he lacked the strength to get up, let alone run. "Alright then, could you make this quick? I wouldn't want to keep the good Lord waiting, after all," he said to the creature, his voice only barely shaking.

The creature turned to him - and winked. Then it shot off, chasing the men.

As a non-supernatural black began creeping in from the edges of his field of vision, all Franklin could say before passing out again was "Huh."

...

“So I’ve been thinking,” Franklin said, lying on his back on a randomly chosen couch.

There was no response: hidden cameras rarely speak.

“I mean, we know what happened in this timeline: the Paradox spirit chased away the Sons of Ether, and the Void Engineers recruited me while I was in the hospital. But what happened originally, before Wrinkle found it necessary to bring me in? I suppose I could’ve ended up recruited by the Sons of Ether, who managed to fight off a weaker Paradox spirit. Or maybe I was killed by the Paradox spirit, or simply by the blast itself. My old man would’ve gotten a kick out of that one.”

“And that worries me,” he continued. “I mean, you know the butterfly effect - the metaphor there seems a bit unlikely, by the way, because if butterfly wings could influence hurricanes, humans would be causing hurricanes all the time by flapping their arms, bumping into things, or even drunk singing. I mean, really, butterflies? Lame. Where was I? Ah, right. The butterfly effect - little changes can have big effects. Jane’s like a scalpel, and Nicole’s a stickler for the rules, so they shouldn’t have too many issues with the whole Prime Directive thing, but me? I’m a sledgehammer. I don’t create ripples, I make waves. There’s about a dozen contacts with Traditionalists and Deviants that could’ve gone very differently if I hadn’t simply walked up to them and said “hi”. Even if Titanium never enters mass production, Robert Downey Jr. was forced to do two more movies as Iron Man because of my usage of it. The CPLEP-NEC schematics may have been destroyed, but the fact that they existed in the first place is known to many. And let’s not forget that without me, we would’ve been stuck with 45 until ‘21.”

He stopped, and drank his fifth shot of his Ultra-Hyper-Caffeinated Quadruple Espresso test batch of the day. *Needs a bit more kick. Cayenne, maybe.*

“Wrinkle’s no fool - I’d imagine the universe would have blown up already if he was. So when you think about it, the only question I don’t already know the answer to is *who* will he send to cut off my wings when this is done? One of my enemies? An unwitting third party? The Paradox spirit that I’d pissed off originally?”

He stared at the ceiling, then closed his eyes and waited for the caffeine to kick in.

“Or will it be you?”

There was no response.