Dimensions (1)

Jack and Tim are walking out to the car from the restaurant when there's a flash and the car's gone. And while Jack's still staring incredulously at the spot where his car isn't, Tim's looking around at everything else.

"Oh SHIT," Tim says, and Jack's torn between chewing him out for cursing, trying to remember if he's ever heard Tim curse before, if he ever does curse, and wondering what could be bad enough to make Tim curse. To put an expression that terrified and that upset on Tim's face. And then he knows, because Tim says "Time and/or dimensional travel."

"What does that mean?" Jack asks. "I mean, I know what it means, but not…"

"What it means," Tim finishes for him. "What it means is that we need to get out of the open and find a newspaper, as fast as we can."

"Have you done this before?" Jack asks, because Tim is both freaked out and acting like he knows what to do. And if anybody had gone to alternate dimensions…

"No, but it's a protocol Bruce made sure I was familiar with." Tim turns and looks him in the eye to emphasize his next point. "There are a lot of pitfalls we can make, so I'm in charge, okay? And my orders aren't open to debate."

"But-" Jack starts to protest, until Tim cuts him off.

"Look, Dad, normally you can pull rank on me. But I have the training for this and you don't. The least that could happen to us is getting killed. This has the potential to destroy everything in the universe, and I'm not exaggerating even a little."

Jack takes a second to think about that, and, yeah, he thinks maybe Tim should be in charge. "Okay. So, newspaper?"

***

The newspaper obviously proves something to Tim, but Jack doesn't know what so he asks.

"The date's the same, so we're dealing with dimensional travel instead of time travel," Tim says. "So we don't have to worry about changing the timeline or being seen, but our money might not be good here. Almost everything in the paper is the same, so we might be in luck, and able to get B. to ring the JLA or whip up something to get us back without spending much time here."

"What's the worst that can happen?" Jack asks, and it's more than a little worrying that Tim pauses before answering.

"…You really don't want to know," he says. "It's the multiverse, so anything that can happen, could potentially have happened in this universe. The only kind of bad things that can happen are things like there being no way home. And this world seeming sane from its newspapers but not, actually, being something we can stand dealing with."

"…Those things are only kind of bad in your book?" Jack asks faintly.

"Not my book," Tim says. "The book of dimensional travel. Trust me, there are some dimensions you really, really want to avoid."

"I believe you," Jack said fervently. Their dimension had enough horrible things in it that he can guess at what worlds worse than theirs could be like, and it chills him to the bone. Tim probably has a better idea of the true extent of the depths humans can sink to. "What next?"

"We turn off our cell phones," Tim says, and does so. "Nobody from our dimension can get through to us. Well, maybe some of the magic-users can, but they wouldn't call our cells anyway. And if we have the same numbers as people in this dimension we might intercept calls meant for them, which could be annoying. And then we find a pay phone."

"I don't know if there are any in this area," Jack says. "Everybody has cell phones now."

Tim thinks. "It's been a while since I've been in this area, so I'm not absolutely certain, even aside from the dimensional issues, but I think there's a phone around that corner." They round the corner, and Tim's right. "Let's hope the number's the same in this dimension," he mutters, and dials without putting in any money.

"Hello?" says the voice on the other end of the line, and Tim almost drops the phone because it's Oracle, and there hasn't been an Oracle for almost a year now, and this number has always been Bruce's emergency number in his dimension.

"Oracle?" he says, a little hesitantly.

"Robin?" she says, and he knows she's puzzled even though he can't hear it through the voice filter. "Why are you in Gotham instead of with the Titans?"

"I really can't talk about it on an unsecured line," he says. "And I don't know if things are enough the same here for this to work, but: meatloaf and Cheerio's."

There's silence on the other end of the line, and then she says "I'm going to transfer your call to A. I'm not in Gotham right now."

"Master 'R'," Alfred says, in that proper-yet-mocking way he has. "I'm told you have a 'meatloaf and Cheerio's' situation."

"It's just 'T'," Tim says. "And yes. And we need pickup."

"We, Master 'T'?" Alfred asks. "You're not alone?"

"My dad's here with me," Tim says. "We're at the corner of Miller and Lee."

"I shall come fetch you posthaste," Alfred says, and Tim hangs up. Jack looks a question at him.

"Alfred's going to come pick us up," Tim says. "Once we're at the Cave we'll hopefully be able to get this all sorted out."

"Alfred?" Jack asks. "Not Bruce?"

"Not unless you want to get swarmed by paparazzi," Tim snorts. "And it's still daytime, so it isn't like he can come pick us up in the other car, not that there would be room."

"You seemed kind of…surprised, on the phone," Jack says.

"I was," Tim says. "Things are the same, but they're different, and it's easier to see the differences the closer we are to what we're used to. Like, we won't notice if Maryland has a different senator, but Oracle still being Oracle threw me for a loop. That kind of thing."

"Oracle?" Jack asks. Somehow he doesn't think Tim's referring to the Greek Oracle.

"Tech whiz. Used to be-" Tim presses his lips together firmly. "Sorry. Not my secret." Jack nods. He thinks he's getting the hang of this, a little. They wait in silence until Alfred pulls up.

"Master Timothy!" Alfred exclaims as they climb in. "And…Mr. Drake?" He looks worried.

"He knows everything, Alfred," Tim says. "And we really do need to talk to Bruce as soon as possible."