Clay Valverde
Test no: 42. of Project: Avertere Fluvium. Clay lounged in his memory foam chair, feet on the messy desk where his calculations are made. Papers and writing utensils litter the glass table. To make his disorganization worse, empty bottles and cans of beverages lay at the sides of his workplace. Currently, he was emptying a cup of honeydew boba he had picked up half an hour ago. Lazily, the man takes his foot and tries three time to move one of his monitors to face him. He eventually puts in within readable distance and reviews his inputs one more time over. Everything seems right. Destination is Delta Gamma sector, X: 89,078.11 Y: 130,539.01 Z: 65.51. Earth. Specifically, the galactic coordinates of Earth in 2007. He forgot about that once, and almost suffocated in Interstellar space. With a sigh, the engineer stands up and turns the face of his watch. In lit blue letters read the command [TAP TO INITIATE WARP]. He was going to visit Lisbon, maybe get some sardines the Portugese are famous for. With a twirl of his finger, he brought it down upon the face of the watch.
With a flash of light, Clay was ready to embrace the warm bake of the Iberian sun. Instead, his face met a scratchy pile of damp and dank hay. Clay stumbles up and brushes the dust off. What he was expecting was a warm public beach. Not a dark, stone shed. The ground was padded dirt. And was that the smell of horse in the air? What the hell happened? With a couple of coughs and a push of wooden doors revealed a city. Lisbon, no doubt, but instead of a 21st Contemporary skyline, was a cobbled street filled with filth and grime. Peasants in tattered clothing walked up and down the street, walking upon worn streets. The smell was nothing less of awful. Plumbing in pre-modern Europe was nothing less than nonexistent. The harbor was just down the road. From what it looked like, he had arrived in the early 17th century. Clay cursed loudly. The slave trade was still going strong, with the shipbuilding industry for the Portuguese to continue their all-important economic outlet. Clay turned the face of his watch to observe the results of his experiment. It had failed, for obvious reasons. From what it looked like, this was another case of what he called "The Valverde Effect", aptly named after himself. From what it seemed, heavy objects like planets and starts had strong enough gravity to pull at the fabric of space time. For the same reason black holes let you experience time quicker, they were able to pull at the trajectory of Clay's travels. Some of these occurrences were not due to planets, however. Unknown objects who also seem to be hurling themselves across space time can distort paths too. Clay was unaware of what- or
who could be doing this. Time travelers were a possibility, but he can't study the causes closely enough. This occurrence seemed to be the latter. But, there was another entry on the holo-log. The source of the anomaly... was currently here. At the same time, the same place. The coordinates pointed down right towards the dock. Without a moments notice, Clay bolted down towards the dock, prepared for anything to come his way.
More than once, Clay heard the Portuguese word for 'savage' shouted at him. Not surprising. It was insulting, no doubt, but they probably died of influenza year or two later. Good on them. Some people decided to shout at him. Racist obscenities that would be considered blasphemous in his own time.
"Vai para o caralho!" Clay retaliated with.
... Huh? The coordinates pointed towards a slaver ship. The
Maçã Dourada, most likely named after the Portugese folk tale, The Hind of the Golden Apple. The anomaly was on a slaver's ship. This was going to be difficult. There was a wooden ramp, easy access, but guards were most likely stationed on deck. The captain was probably out negotiating a trade, but in no way was the ship unguarded. Rummaging through his bag, the engineer pulls out a black rectangle, with a yellow strip on the wider end. He only had one, so this had to count. The object was his own invention, a taser. It sent a signal to the brain to instantaneously sleep the target in a matter of seconds. Clay used it during sleepless nights. Sneaking around the wooden hull, Clay crouches and sneaks to the ramp. He climbs it and scans the area. From what he could see, there was only one man on deck. He had his back turned. With a quick sprint and a chokehold, the object was stuck into the man's neck, knocking him out. He held his mouth and let him down easy, to minimize noise. The signal was from the inside of a ship. Very odd... has the potential traveler been enslaved? Clay walked towards the grate leading to the underbelly of the ship- the slave's quarters. With a kick of the lattice and a slide down the wooden ladder, he was under the deck. Once his boots stamped against the wood, Clay - was met with an unbearable stench. The smell of men treated like animals- neglected and unshowered, starving, dehydrated, crimes against humanity. The smell made him tear up before the moral violations. Some of these captives appeared to be Eastern. Prisoners of war from the Portugese conflicts in Macau. After Clay was done here, the slavers would be thrown off ship. Might as well liberate the tortured souls around him. Among the crowd was a boy with Caucasian pigment- or lack thereof. If anyone was the anomaly, it was going to be the odd one out. Clay made his way around the humans that were packed on the ground. He tried his hardest not to step on them in the cramped space. Clay stood in front of the seemingly unconscious boy. He poked the boy in the face until his eyes fluttered.
"Vocę fala Português, garoto?"