1:4:1 Cambridge (Part 1)

Soaking. It was as if neither of them had ever used a water based shower. Both Sky and Blue left the bathrooms dripping wet with only a sodden towel to protect their modesty. Char pointed them in the right direction before returning to her own preparations. While two thousand and Nine was a saturated point and one of the safer ones at that, Earth wasn’t quite ready for aliens and she didn’t look quite human. She scanned the fabricator databanks until she eventually found what she was looking for. Just like the respirators, the fabricator spat out a pair of black, beadlike objects. Char affixed them to her collar, watched them blend in with her clothes before she downloaded and read the instructions.
“Place in direct contact with skin before initial activation can commence.” She raked her hand over her lapels until she found the two raised objects. “Oops.” She whispered to herself. They were somehow colder on her collar bones than in her fingers. They again vanished, blending this time with her skin. “Activate then open interface on nearby terminal.” She rolled her eyes at the small chore of having to walk to another terminal to properly use the device. “Select your appearance then tap the left collar bone twice to activate.” She scrolled through the possible skin tones using the predictive mirror to see what she looked like. No matter which one she chose, she looked wrong. Human skin just didn’t seem to suit her. Char decided to narrow her search from all the possible skin tones for a human to those typically seen in the time period. One stood out to her. She tried it. It wasn’t perfect but it would do.
“Woah.” Blue looked Char up and down. “I thought we were going to Earth?”
“The past is a different planet.” Lore entered the changing area. “That sort of look was immensely popular in a county called Essex. For some reason, they liked looking orange. This would be considered a ‘healthy’ glow.” Lore looked at Char. Her skin was slightly more orange than the clones but still passed as human. “Still need to change though. Robes were more than a bit out of fashion by then.”
“Obviously.” Char sighed. “I was going to help these two out first then sort myself out.”
“Alright. See you in a bit then.” Lore smiled before turning to the fabricator on the wall by them and beginning their search for their disguise. They scanned what seemed like an infinite wardrobe before they came across a file with their name on it. They opened the file to find a whole library of folders, each labelled with a different year range. They opened the one marked ‘late ninety’s to early noughties’. Inside were the patterns for five items of clothing. Lore retrieved a t-shirt, a blue and white plaid shirt, a blue leather belt, black jeans and a pair of grey canvas shoes. Lore also found themselves a clean set of underwear before scurrying off to a cubicle to change. As they redressed they noticed that, despite the fabric feeling soft and stretchy as expected, the tags made the claim that each item had a degree of kinetic and energy weapon resistance; combined, the shirt and overshirt would, theoretically, be able to stop any conventional pistol round native to the twenty first century.
The door to the cubicle opened slightly. “Safe to come in?”
Lore pulled up their trousers and adjusted their bra. “Come in.” They seemed more confident than they had the last time she caught them in a similarly compromising situation.
Char squeezed in and put her clothes on the bench next to Lore’s. Her chosen outfit was in keeping with her disguise, a cropped top and jeans. “The things I do for you.” She smiled.
“We don’t have to go to Earth if you don’t want to.” Lore flashed a smile back. “We’ve got time travel, we could go to Quatarr.”
“And do what, visit my parents? Quatarr’s nice but there’s nothing really to do.” Char was careful not to knock the nodes on her collarbones.
“Maybe for you but I’d love to see your home world. I’m sure Quatarr has shops or museums.” Lore shrugged.
“The only good museum is The Museum of the three. It’s devoted to the thing that showed up in the final hours of the three year month. Turns out, that wasn’t the first time it came to Quatarr or the Quatarrian empire.” Char was beginning to sound really passionate. “The museum had records of it showing up everywhere. Plus, there’s this one room which has always been sealed. No-one knows what’s inside.”
“We should go.” Lore pulled their top over their face. Once their head re-emerged, Char’s had dropped.
“Maybe once we’ve done whatever the other Lores want us to do with Quatarr before we plan any holidays.”
Lore snuggled closer to Char. “I’ve got time travel, you’ve got time travel. What’s stopping us?”
“The impenetrable field of Tempora energy that was released when the planet was destroyed. That stuff lingers.” Char grabbed her transporter from her pile. She brought up a holographic image of Quatarr. “That cloud covers almost all of Quatarr’s history. There are only a handful of breaks in it and I don’t want to risk the consequences of trying to Breach through that. Temporal shearing’s hard enough when you’ve got a hull around you but without a capsule, you’d better have made peace with your maker.”
They finished dressing, haunted by the mental image of a humanoid warped by the infinite and looping forces of time.

Sky and Blue were somehow wearing the exact same outfit without knowledge. They looked each other in the eye. Sky narrowed her gaze until Blue vanished back into the cubicle. They were in there a moment before returning in an outfit different enough to satisfy Sky but without changing everything.
“Right then, ground rules.” Char began. She had to pause because for some reason, Blue and Sky couldn’t stop laughing. “What?”
“Why are you orange?” Blue couldn’t contain themselves.
“Rule one. Blend in. No offence but your human pink doesn’t suit me so this is the next best thing.” Char sighed. “Trust me, I’ll pass. Rule two: Don’t touch anything that looks like it could be important. Don’t touch anything that we don’t say you can touch. You nudge the wrong person at the wrong time and suddenly, everyone in the future decides it’s fashionable to block one nostril or something equally weird.”
“What?” Sky looked stunned.
“It was just a hypothetical. Look, just don’t do anything we don’t do. Follow in our footsteps.” Lore absentmindedly tapped in the coordinates to their Breacher before realising that the user interface had changed and they hadn’t done anything. “Oh.” They paused. “Oh. The new update… I’m not sure I like it.” They looked through the new features. “Why do I need to be able to Breach to such precision. I mean, look.” They showed the interface to Char. “I can select my Breaching point to the nearest centimetre and second. That’s too much. I don’t mind the idea of having a Breaching shield though.”
“A bit of extra protection could come in handy I guess.” Char shrugged.
“I think it’s designed to be like a temporary capsule rather than something protective. I hope we don’t have to find out.” Lore was careful to tap their Breacher this time. “Come on then, hands in.” Lore held out their hand. Char placed hers on top and huddled in close. Sky and Blue followed suit. Lore raised the shield then activated their Breacher.

With four people, they were expecting the journey to be a lot rougher than it was. The shield collapsed about forty-five seconds after they materialised in a back alley. The cobbled roads were an unexpected oddity to the siblings who had only known the deteriorating steel of Rexel. They both squinted to the point of their eyes nearly being closed as they left the alley and entered the midday sun.
“So, the party is tomorrow but the Time Tourists have saturated the whole fortnight either side of it so we can stay a while if you want.” Lore removed a small device from their pocket. “Just so we don’t stand out too much, I fabricated this. It’s called a sat-nav. It’ll let you see my map basically. We can use it to navigate and the locals can help us if we need it. Better than a paper map.”
“What’s paper?” Blue manipulated the Sat-Nav. They recoiled when they accidentally turned it on and it spoke to them.
“You’ll see.” Char directed them down the street. “Loosen up, it’s Earth. Calm down.”
Sky jumped off of the curb then back onto it. “Gravity feels funny.”
“That’s because it’s not as strong here.” Lore flashed up the information on their glasses. “Rexel has a gravitational pull equivalent to one and a half g, or one and a half times stronger than Earth’s gravity.”
“Where are we going?” Sky poked Char who had taken the lead of the group.
She stopped dead in her tracks. “I’m not sure. I was just going to take us to the nearest pub but that might be a bad idea.”
“Time Tourists.” Lore nodded. They thought for a moment before looking at their map. “I think we might have a safe house somewhere nearby. We could go there for a bit while these two get used to Earth.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Char gestured for Lore to lead.
They walked down the road passing student accommodation and a variety of shops. Blue and Sky seemed magnetised to each shop front, clinging like glue to each one they passed; it didn’t matter what was being sold, there was always something to entice them.
“Can we go in?” They pointed at the blacked out windows of a betting shop. “It looks interesting.” Sky nearly broke their neck trying to get a sneak peek inside.
“No. Lore and I don’t have any money with us yet. Plus you’re both too young to go in there anyway.” Char pulled them away like the children they were, sulking.
“Why didn’t you fabricate any then?” Blue frowned.
“Because fabricators can’t make money. If every time traveller visited times like this with fabricated money, the whole timeline would be changed. Too much money in the system would destroy it.” Lore shrugged. “Capitalism.”
“So we’ve got no money then.” Sky checked.
“There’s a penny on the floor down by your foot.” Char pointed with her eyes. “Old saying says if it’s heads up, that’s some good luck.”
Sky squatted. “That looks like a head. A woman’s head.” They cleaned off the coin then smelled it. “Smells like home just not as much.”
“Come on, I think we’ve got some money in the safe house.” Lore smiled. That perked them up. They ran ahead, trying to predict where Lore was going. They weren’t too far off. They turned a corner. Blue and Sky ran down the alley but Lore and Char remained at the mouth. “Where are you two going?” Lore knelt down behind a bin and picked up a familiarly shaped object. It had been designed to blend with its surroundings, covered in a cement and asphalt type material.
“Why is everything cubes with you?” Char shook her head.
Lore was about to speak but thought for a moment. “I don’t really know, I’m not them.” They slid a panel aside, revealing a button. Without thinking, they pressed it. From Char and the sibling’s point of view, they vanished.