EXPEDITION: An Unmatched Fanfiction

Chapter Seventeen: Restless Spirits

After their introductory conversation, Tesla hospitably offered King Arthur and Sherlock Holmes the opportunity to reside in the workhouse until the time machine was complete. With no other feasible place for Arthur to stay, Holmes ecstatically took the invite, offering himself to stay overnight as well even though his abode was only a cab ride away. Tesla questioned Holmes's motives for this, but Holmes was resolute in the fact that he had not seen his good friend Tesla in "hundreds of dog years," and wanted to stay to help with the project in any way he could.

King Arthur and Holmes were shown one of the bedrooms in the abandoned workhouse. Being that the workhouse was no longer inhabited for commercial purposes, the room was quite enormous for just the two heroes to sleep in, but it was clear that the room was intended for many more residents. Lines of beds crowded the floor, smushed so close together that the individual rows looked like incredibly wide mattresses fit only for primeval giants. The mattresses themselves were as thin as sheets of paper and discolored like dirty river water. The room had a sole window on the head wall, but it was so grimy that the sun had an impossibly hard time shining through it, making the whole room duller as a result.

The walls contained the unique odor of dust that had built up for years. This dust had seen many people, witnessed laborers with long histories of physical stress and anguish being forced to toil in the workhouse for nothing more than a meager meal and a bed to rest in. While the workhouse was abandoned, it felt as if none of the work these laborers put in was of any tangible worth. It used to be the sole source of survival for hundreds of English workers, but now it lay with hundreds of untold stories of men whose tales would never be told. Whispers of these men floated through the air, crying out in agony as to what the purpose of all their turmoil was, but no living ear could hear them. King Arthur shivered, thinking that--despite his newfound confidence--if Tesla's plan was unable to return him to his own time, the same fate might befall him.

Arthur did not spend any more than a minute in the room, returning to Tesla to learn more about how this technology of the future came to be and how it can help in his quest to find the source. Walking back into the main room, he was still baffled by the machinery which filled it. He was certain that if he lived in this era, he would have a better grasp on the utility of all these inventions, but his antiquated eyes could barely register all the contraptions crammed into the space. It all looked like some sort of industrial hallucination to him. If he wanted to find the source and destroy whatever was behind it, he realized he would have to do some acclimating to whatever land he found himself in.

King Arthur walked up to Tesla, who was already back to working on the large time machine in the middle of the room. "I wanted to show my appreciation to you once more!" Arthur called to him. "Your willingness to aid me and house me so generously is greatly appreciated by all of England!"

Tesla looked up from his work to see Arthur approaching him. His eyes showed a hint of apprehension behind his thick goggles, but he presented a warm smile. "It is what you must do for a king, I suppose."

Arthur looked around again at the bewildering machine surrounding him. "You certainly have an impressive output of work here."

Tesla left the time machine's side and came closer to Arthur, being happy to engage in any conversation about his passions. "Well, I truly feel that stopping would be a disservice to mankind."

"What do you mean?"

Tesla inhaled as if we was about to speak, then stopped, sporting an inquisitive look. "Let me show you something, Arthur." Without warning, he sprinted to another corner of the room, puttering about with another one of his metal gizmos. Curious, Arthur walked over to see what he was doing. When he neared, he saw a small, circular metal tube wrapped around itself, placed atop a brown stem connected to a metal base. The base had a concoction of multicolored wires sticking out from it, scattered in all directions. He recognized the machine, as there were different versions of it in varying sizes all across the large room, though the version Tesla toyed with was the smallest.