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The people who lived their lives in one long linear stretch, going from birth to death and hitting some or most or even all of the usual miletones along the way referred to it as "borrowed time". In the Milkman's view, that was a misnomer of such scale that it bordered on fraudulent.

This was stolen time. It was stolen from drive-in theatre owners watching their margins dwindle to nothing, from confused cows giving out confused milk, and from everyone who spent November to March just a little out of sync with their surroundings.

He glared up at the clocktower.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Marshall scanned the contract, a jeweller's loupe close at hand should there be any suspiciously small-print sections. He stopped at the sight of one particularly long string of digits.

"What's this?" he asked. "This figure here."

The Milkman from Human Resources glanced over.

"Oh, that's your annual leave," he said.

Marshall looked again. The number was significantly longer than three hundred and sixty five, even accounting for leap years.

The Milkman from Human Resources seemed to follow his train of thought, because he elaborated:

"It accrues with every month of service. Our records indicate that you'll work here continuously with us until the age of 117, barring a short sabbatical involving inter-dimensional travel, a possible cure for lycanthropy that turns out to be a false lead, and a single very angry cactus, which was pre-authorised and therefore did not affect your holiday entitlement."

"Cactus Cat?" Marshall asked, and the Milkman from Human Resources glanced down at his notes.

"No," he said. "Aside from occasional overly-aggressive skewering of people's shins in search of scritches, the Cactus Cat lives a long and peaceable life with one Simon Holmes."

"Oh," said Marshall. "I'll be sure to let Simon know. He'll be pleased."

He looked again at the number. It was still very large, but then, 117 was very old...

"You'll use it all up shortly before your 111th birthday," said the Milkman from Human Resources. "I'd tell you this to give you the chance to ration it and avoid that outcome, but I'm afraid it's inevitable."

Marshall thought about it.

"I'm not sure I want to work my last six years without any time off," he said.

The Milkman from Human Resources turned some pages.

"It appears that you and Management come to an agreement about that," he said. "The details are confidential."

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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After a hundred and five and a half years, the Milkman had experienced many things, witnessed even more, and thought that he'd have an appropriate response to most.

This, however, was a new one.

"What?" he asked, half-expecting that after over a century of running, time - and senility - had finally caught up with him.

"I said," Melanie repeated, with what was for her a remarkable display of patience, "Can you bend time so that I never have to preheat an oven ever again?"

It was such a Melanie Monroe sort of question that all the Milkman could do was laugh.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The time canoe had discovered the car's ability to take on human form, and now it was jealous and refusing to work. Marshall Teller, his socks both damp and temporally displaced due to an overflowing time stream that was somehow leaking out from under the shower tray, took a deep breath and tried to remain calm.

"Nobody's saying you can't be a person," he said, stepping backwards to avoid a spreading puddle of soda whose brand name was unknown to anyone born before 2047. "If you want, after this we can go to the Eerie Mall and do all kinds of cool people things. But for there to be an 'after', there needs to first of all be a right now, and right now our kitchen sink is overflowing with the space-time continuum and the contents of the laundry hamper is being used to soak up misplaced probabilities, and-"

He realised he was shouting and lowered his voice.

"And so right now what I really, really need is a time canoe, a linear paddle, and for you to let me tie this dino-proof twine around your centreline."

The time canoe flickered, sulkily, as it phased back into reality.

"Thank you."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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So after [livejournal.com profile] friendof_dorothy and [livejournal.com profile] deifire respectively made me remember fanmixes and Five Things fic in the space of a single day, I decided it would be fun to have a Fandom Tropes challenge once a month, to remind us of all the stuff that used to be super common in fandom that maybe we don't see as much as we'd like to these days.

Your prompt for this month is:

PORTAL TO THE PAST
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One of the Time-o-Saurs had broken loose, tearing through a weak point in the net of dino-proof twine that held their reality separate from what Marshall still, despite everything, thought of as "regular Eerie."

The first thing it had done was come for the time canoe, still stored at the very back of the cupboard under the stairs in Marshall's parents' house.

Luckily, the regular canoe his dad had bought under the influence of The Donald's subliminal advertising had acted as an accidental decoy, and the Time-o-Saur had left clutching it's worthless orange prize, leaving their secret weapon behind it.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Ongoing Verse: Teller Family History

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"So," she said, once she was back in her seat with a sufficiently-doctored drink in front of her. "What am I doing here?"

"I'm not entirely sure," the Milkman confessed. "This is my sixty-seventh-and-a-half go 'round and I can't tell if I'm trapped in a time-loop and pulling you in or if it's the other way around. For all I know, it might even be something else entirely."

Janet thought about this, one hand absently tapping a long column of ash away from a cigarette that had burned all the way down much faster than it should.

"Hmm," she said.


Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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The three-eyed cow painted on the side of the milk truck stared at Janet as she approached, the bovine grin wide and leering, a single cornstalk clutched between wide, blunt teeth.

The Milkman had told Janet she'd be safe, and weighing the risks of trusting him against her dislike of black coffee, she'd decided to risk it. She'd encountered the occasional evil Marshall before, but to a one they'd all sported goatees and were therefore pretty easy to avoid.

Still, she breathed a little easier once she was back inside, a tall glass bottle of half-and-half cool in her hands.


Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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One of the good things about the abandoned realities, Janet reflected, was the way entropy just... stopped working.

The unopened bag of Dark Gods' Darkest Roast Ground Coffee was as fresh as if it had been stored in ForeverWare, the water from the tap in he kitchen ran cold and clear, and the packet of filters were white, crisp and untroubled by dust despite having sat on the shelf for Corn-knew how long.

"Thanks," said the Milkman, as she slid a mug across the spotless tabletop towards him. "There's milk and stuff in the back of the truck, if you want."


Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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"Thanks for the heads up," Janet said wryly. "Did any of the other me's manage to figure it out?"

The Milkman pulled a sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his crisp white uniform. The ink on it was fresh enough to smudge slightly under his fingers, but the paper was yellow-brown and brittle with age. He handed it over.

"Huh," said Janet. "Somewhere between seventy-eight and eighty-three, allowing for time dilation caused by loose twine on the time canoe. And apparently I'm not to ask Mister Radford for his age under any circumstances."

"Seems wise," agreed the Milkman.


Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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Janet lit up, pausing for a moment to savour the taste of tobacco and nicotine while she inspected the latest (relatively speaking) version of Marshall.

He was old, but not as old as he'd been the first (second?) time she'd met him as the Milkman. Older than her parents and most of the teachers at school. Somewhere around Mister Radford's age, or at least around the age that Radford presented himself as.

"You'll only get a headache," the Milkman warned her. "One of the other you's even passed out trying to work it out. Gave herself a nosebleed and concussion."


Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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"Sorry!" this version of Marshall repeated. "I didn't want to turn on the light in case someone was watching the Baitshop and caught me hiding out here."

"It's okay," Janet lied, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a crumpled packet of cigarettes. She placed one between her lips, then paused.

"Is this one of the empty realities? I don't want to smoke in here if another one of me is going to catch hell for it somewhere along the timeline."

"You're good," the Milkman assured her. "This iteration's been abandoned since the timestream flooded a hundred years from now."

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Janet

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There was always the time-canoe, wrapped in plastic and propped up in the darkest corner of his parent's attic. Their rented apartment didn't have room for it, and besides, they'd never bothered replacing the dinosaur-proof twine after their last adventure in the time-stream. The threat of time-o-saurs hadn't been an issue before now.

The time-stream was most dangerous in spring, when Easter rabbits hatched from hen's eggs and the laws of probability were even wobblier than usual. He couldn't remember where the life-jackets were, or where they'd stored the time-anchor.

No, rescue by time-canoe was out, at least for now.

Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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The Eerie Morgue was proving to be even more upsetting than Marshall had prepared for. Dead bodies, he had expected. Dead bodies that were still up and moving around, also well within the realm of possibility.

Dead bodies in pieces, and those pieces still galvanized by some twisted, malevolent form of life, that had been bad. He'd screamed. He'd thrown up. He may even have cried a little, once he'd turned the camcorder off.

Every single one of those bodies looking like him, though; that was proving harder to get over. Cloning, robot duplicates or time travel - it all sucked.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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The roof had fallen in and weeds were sprouting from the cracks in the walls. The whole building listed to one side, a lean so pronounced that the stairs up to the second floor had buckled, folding in on themselves like the bellows of a half-collapsed accordion.

The Milkman selected a wire-mesh cage containing four pint bottles that glistened with condensation. He set them on the moss-covered front step before forcing the swollen door open and stepping inside.

"What's with the delivery?" asked Marshall, following him in.

"Fixed point in time and space," explained the Milkman. "The milk's our anchor."

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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The ghost wore a white shroud with two eye-holes cut out. It was wrapped in chains, and all along their length it had attached various time pieces that ticked and buzzed and rang at random. The resulting noise made communication difficult, and the over-all effect was that Marshall had to keep stifling his giggles.

"I'm a Time Ghost!" said the ghost, after a large gilt carriage clock snagged on a corner of the rug and had to be untangled. "Aimlessly I drift, unanchored from my rightful place 'pon the timeline of the living world! OooooOOOOOOooooOOOOooohh!"

"Isn't that-" Marshall began, then paused as a chained cuckoo clock began hooting the hour. Twenty-seven hoots later, when it finally shut up, he tried again. "Aren't all ghosts out of their time? Except for very recent ones, I guess?"

"No!" said the ghost. "I've got symbolism! Look at my chains!"

Marshall looked. He giggled.


Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Marshall set the over-filled coffee mug down, spilling a little as he did so. Simon, glancing up from the textbook open in front of him, shot him a quick smile that rapidly transformed into a concerned frown.

"Mars?" he asked. "You okay? You look..." he searched for a tactful phrasing and settled on "Not... okay?"

Marshall groaned, pressing the heels of his hands into eyes ringed by dark circles.

"Present me hates past me," he said. "Past me is an idiot."

Simon paused.

"Past You in the sense that you stayed up too late last night and now you're paying for it, or Past You like the Milkman showed up with some nightmarish tale of temporal distortion caused by you knocking over a glass of orange juice when you were thirteen?"

Marshall blinked.

"I'm asking if I need to go get the Time Canoe out of storage," said Simon. "If the space-time continuum is in danger of collapsing, I'd like us all to be wearing life jackets when it does."

"Oh," said Marshall, as understanding dawned like a very tired sun. "No, it's just a late night. Cursed study aides, I fell down a jackalope hole. The time stream's fine."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Marshall stood in front of the huge glass display case that ran down the centre of the room, staring past rows of ornate antique clocks at the man on the other side.

The man, who was also Marshall, though older, gave an awkward wave. He pointed towards the far end of the long room, where a small gap allowed visitors to the Eerie Museum of Horology to circle around the cabinet housing some of history's most important timepieces, and made a questioning sort of shrug.

Marshall shrugged back, then nodded, heading off in the direction his older self had indicated.

Ongoing Verse: Milkman

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Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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This past summer I lost my best friend and tried to find some peace of mind in a sci-fi fantasy about cats, newspapers, and time travel

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Within the zeitgeist of 90’s fantasy shows, a family friendly series that would carve a comfortable rerun life on the Fox Family Channel (Freeform) and Hallmark, probably didn’t rank up there as TV Guide’s Must-Watch of Fall 1996. Especially since it debuted 9:00PM on a Saturday, a time slot I typically know as a dead zone after Sunday (based on Felicity’s swift cancellation on TheWB after four seasons). At least it was by 2002.

But the show lasted for four years, surviving long enough into the New Millennium. Early Edition wasn’t lacking in an audience. The series fell somewhere in the nexus where science fiction and fantasy met in the middle. It catered to the same demographics that loved shows like Touched By Angel, Eerie, Indiana, and Sliders.

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