The world around you is still crackling with energy as you get up. Wow; you knew it would be intense, but you never appreciated just how strange it would feel – like a thousand electric shocks at once - until you did it. You've just traveled back in time, back 500 years. The temporal eddies dissipate like lightning into the ground, and you take stock of your surroundings. In one hand you hold the device that just let you defy physics: the brown pen. In the other, your only hope of completing your mission in this foreign land: the black pen.
It's a cold morning; you're in England during the summer of 1535. King Henry VIII is on the throne, his wife Anne Boleyn – Queen Anne – sits beside him. This is the time when history as you know it will unravel; it's up to you to find out why.
You backtrack, thinking about past events in your own timeline: events that take place in the future. In 2027 the pens were developed. One was a time-travel device, the other a molecular compressor. Every atom in the world can be screwed up into a tennis ball if compressed; and once you can reorganize atomic structure, disguise becomes easy. The pens are top secret prototypes; only the upper echelons of your organization know about them. And only a handful of people – you included – know about the symbols.
Yes, the reason for your visit to this time: the symbols on the pens. Symbols that have appeared in artifacts and archaeological digs from multiple time periods, from the ancient world to the Wild West. Nobody knows what the symbols represent, or who left them throughout time. The creator of the pens was a mad scientist in every sense of the phrase, and killed himself shortly after making his creations; he never explained how he did it, or what the symbols he added to the pens mean. You have been sent to find out.
Back to your present. You look about you; you're in a large garden of some kind. On instinct, you hurry behind the nearest hedge row. This is Hampton Court Palace, Henry VIII's seat of power. In two days' time, during a feast, someone will scratch the symbols on the back of the throne of England; it's a documented event, part of the evidence later used to send Anne Boleyn to the headsman's block as a witch, though at the time it was largely ignored as petty vandalism. You need to be there to see who does it.
The black pen is your weapon; find someone, use the compressor to create a wearable skinsuit, slip into their identity and wait. You've studied enough to recognize key figures, and an expert has taught you how to act. Once done, the brown pen will let you jump to another time when the symbols appeared, until you've solved all parts of this temporal the riddle. That's not your immediate concern, though. You're currently wearing a 21st century jumpsuit; you'll stand out if you don't find someone to impersonate quickly.
The garden you're hiding in is to the back of the palace. The grass is covered in dew and a thin mist hangs over the whole of the palace. It's early morning, there isn't much activity, but you can spy a couple of candidates for your first disguise. A guard is patrolling the grounds, a regular stomp of boots not far away; you could take his place, and use his access to find another person to become. Alternatively, through the bush you can see a maid carrying a bucket of water. She's care-worn, probably in her mid-thirties, reed-thin and wearing work clothes. She would give you access to everywhere, though...
Finally, you hear laughter, and two soft voices chatting to each other above the clatter of hooves. You scramble along the bush to look out. Two ladies-in-waiting, both aged in their early 20s, are just finishing a morning ride. One, a pale girl with ginger locks tied back in an ornate ponytail, seems to be hanging back to pick some flowers. She could be an ideal choice too; as her, you could easily slip into court unnoticed. Given the way she is dressed, she could even be one of the Queen's maids. You could even use her as a stepping stone to become, at least for a few days, the Queen of England herself; who better to see who etches the symbols onto the throne?
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