Previously on 2.17 Seconds Into Never, Liz Flask, the Wombat, Gaseous Girl, and Ron Raven had just been whisked away somewhere in Time by the Green Moth in hopes of retrieving the missing Meg Atomic. Meanwhile, Meg escaped the Cretaceous Period just before the asteroid and now finds herself somewhere entirely different…
The old man was nearly home when he heard the sound. Ordinarily he might not have noticed it, lost in thought as he was, but this wasn’t the usual sounds of the forest, the chirping birds or the snuffling of animals in the dirt. This wasn’t even a sound he’d heard before but had tried to escape, such as the hooves of knights’ horses or the jostling of a crowd of people. This was something entirely new, a cross between a lightning flash and a warble, and before he could fully make sense of it a woman appeared out of nowhere right in his path.
“Oh,” he said, which was more than could’ve been expected. Many people of his time who had just seen someone appear out of thin air would’ve screamed and run away, or shrieked accusations about witchcraft. The old man was more used to miracles.
The woman blinked. “Ah,” she said. She seemed about as surprised as he was. “I don’t suppose, this is going to be an odd question, but could you tell me what year this is?”
“Of course,” said the old man. “It is the year of our Lord 931. I am Daniel, a hermit and, some would say, a mystic, although I don’t know about all that. I am returning from a great festival held at the castle of Camelot to celebrate the return of-”
“Camelot?” she gasped.
“Yes,” Daniel the Mystic said. “Surely you’ve heard of Camelot, home of Arthur and his knights of-”
“The Round Table, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard,” the woman said. “I’m Meg, by the way, and, just to be clear, you’re telling me you’ve just come from Camelot, the Camelot? Look, I’ve got to ask: is it only a model?” She broke into a spasm of laughter, unable to help it; going from dinosaurs to knights on horseback was really just too much.
Daniel the Mystic didn’t understand, and he had enough to worry about anyway without this adding to it. “No,” he said brusquely, “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I need to return to my home as quickly as possible; I’ve had a rather disturbing vision and I need to sort out what it means.”
“Oh, okay, sure, no problem,” said Meg, still laughing. “I’ll just head over to Camelot and King Arthur then.”
“I would suggest that you do so,” Daniel said, and he stalked down the path.
“Out of curiosity,” Meg called after him, “What were you celebrating? I mean, I don’t know where in the story I am, you see.”
Daniel sighed, and turned back around to face her. “The celebration is still ongoing; I left before it was over because of my vision. As to its cause, we were rejoicing over the return of the brave knight Lancelot from his adventures abroad.”
“Lancelot…” Meg murmured. Then all at once her face turned white as paper. “Has he met Guinevere?”
“The Queen?” Daniel said, startled. “Well, I wouldn’t know, as I said I left the festival prior to its conclusion, so-”
“Which way?” Meg said. “Camelot, the castle, all that, which way?”
Completely at a loss, Daniel the Mystic pointed. She looked wildly around. “Okay,” she said to herself. “No cars. No planes. No horses around and I can’t ride one anyway. There is- I don’t know if that’ll work- it could-only option- right.”
She held her arms out and braced a bit, as if she were about to jump into the air. “You might want to stand back,” she said to Daniel. “I haven’t tried this before. Theoretically it should work, the probabilities are right, but…”
“Tried what?” the baffled mystic said.
All at once the ground shook, Daniel nearly fell over, and Meg shot up into the air and away, disappearing into the sky. He stared at the small crater in the ground where she had been standing. He was used to miracles, yes, but this…
When he looked up again, two men and two women in brightly colored uniforms stood where Meg had been standing. “Hey,” one of them said. “Have you seen-”
“She flew that way,” Daniel said, waving to show the direction.
“Flew?” the other woman said. “I did not know she could do that.”
“Good thing she’s not the only one,” the first woman said, and then she too shot up into the sky, trailing fire.
Daniel sighed. “Camelot is that way,” he told the others. “You’ll find King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table there. Now, if you’ll excuse a poor mystic, I think I need to go home and lie down for a while.” He bowed with as much courtesy as he could muster, and went on down the path, hoping very much that he wouldn’t have to deal with any more miracles for a very long time.
Hopefully, Meg won't see the violence inherent in the system, and get repressed.
But what was his vision??