Oscillation

Oscillation

It were times like this, Chris Skelton mused to himself from beneath the safety of his desk, it were times like this that made him really wonder why he had ever wanted to become a copper. It had been difficult enough to even get on the force to begin with. He had always been a clumsy child; there were vivid memories of hearing his nan talking to him mum. "It's just a phase he's going through, he'll grow out of it." But he hadn't. It wasn't that he was stupid, it was just that he was comfortable in his own little world. But sometimes he simply got tired of being lonely. From the time he had first met them, he had always wished he could be as cool as Ray or as fearless as the Guv. The truth was, he was happy they even tolerated his presence, and he was terrified that they would someday tire of him.

What would Ray think of him if he saw him like this, hiding beneath his desk at the first sign of trouble? He had been picking up the stack of file folders he had carelessly knocked on the floor when the nutter with the gun had started shooting in the hallway. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world at the time to just dive beneath the desk and stay put. But now that the shooting had stopped, he wondered how he was going to get out from under there with his dignity intact. When he heard the Guv bellowing at someone nearby, he knew that would be impossible, so he swallowed his pride (yet again) and pulled himself unsteadily out from his hiding place.

The squad room was strangely empty. He could have sworn he had heard Sam and Annie talking to someone just a few minutes ago, but neither of them were anywhere to been seen. Chris looked around carefully to see if he had missed anything important before approaching his DCI, who was at the present glowering down upon a young woman he had never seen before. He was fairly certain that he was going to get yelled at, but he figured he might as well be as prepared as he could before he put his foot in his mouth.

"What happened? Where is everyone?"

"Trust the boss to disappear at a time like this," came Ray's voice from behind him. Chris nearly jumped out of his skin. It was if Ray had appeared out of nowhere.

"A time like what?" was all Chris could think of in reply. But before Ray could answer, the Guv resumed his tirade, this time including Chris (and he had feared) and Ray.

"Some fat load of good you lot are! A shooter comes prancing into my squad room...my squad room! and where are you? You..." (Chris cringed as the Guv poked his finger in his face) "You were hiding, you..." (now it was Ray's turn) "were off only God knows where and Tyler has pranced off with Cartwright as usual, leaving me here alone with this one..."

"Excuse me? 'This one'? I'm standing right here, you know!" The controller had just about had it with this caveman and didn't particularly care who knew about it. "I am perfectly qualified to care for any policing task you might see fit to assign me! What is more, I am apparently the only person here who did not run away when the shooting began!" (She knew that was only a half truth. She had merely hit the floor when Agent Tyler had told her to. And had apparently hit it too hard, judging by the throbbing pain in her head and a missing 5 minutes or so of her memory. But she was not going to back down from this, this cretin, now.) "If there is anything that needs doing while Ag...Inspector Tyler is away, I assure you that I am more than equal to the task!"

"Oh, really?" A dark, sarcastic voice from behind her. She turned to face the voice and was struck numb by the fierce blue eyes burning at her. "Why don't you prove it?" Fire and ice. She had to almost visibly shake herself to break the spell of those eyes, but after a few seconds, she regained her composure.

"All right, pretty boy. Come with me and I'll show you how to do this job properly."

----------------------

Under normal mission circumstances, the logistics crews would be notified when an agent arrived on scene. They would have already prepared a cover story, with all of the necessary documentation and any supporting items that might be needed for the duration of the mission. Sometimes all that was needed were a few items of clothing or paperwork. Sometimes, they would have to construct nearly an entire lifetime, especially if an agent was going to being staying for a matter of months or years. A vehicle, a dwelling, financial records, maybe even a family member or two would be rounded up and waiting for the operative's arrival. The agent would arrive, the crew would hand over the necessary items and then they would leave. (The crew in Agent Tyler's case had been presented with a somewhat touchy situation. He had arrived on scene unconscious; while this was not entirely unprecedented, it was highly unusual and there was no clear direction on how they should proceed. They had tried their best to revive him, but when they had not been able to bring him back around after a few tries, they had to decide on a course. Should they simply leave before they were discovered by a random passerby? The crew chief had finally decided that it would be prudent for them to do their job to the best of their ability and then clear out. So they had dressed him as discreetly as they could [The crew chief's assistant had even had the absolute cheek to insist that he put his own jacket on the unconscious man, since it was 'cold and wet and they didn't want him to catch his death out there.'], thrown the paperwork in a nearby vehicle and had transported on to their next assignment. The chief had wondered the rest of his days whatever became of his beloved leather jacket.)

So there had been no one to meet the controller on her arrival in 1973. She hadn't really thought about her appearance or what she would do for food or shelter once she had arrived. She hadn't thought past finding Sam and bringing him back. Now she was going to have to do some fast thinking and even faster talking. She wondered just how gullible these locals might be and what kind of story she could feed them. As she sat in the front passenger seat of a frighteningly rickety vehicle of dubious road worthiness, her mind was more on the predicament in which she found herself than on where they were going. Apparently, the driver of the vehicle was having the same problem. He kept stealing sidelong glances in her direction, then quickly looking away if she seemed to notice.

It wasn't that Chris was intimidated by this woman. No, he was intimidated by all women in general. But this one in particular had very plainly and openly talked back to the Guv and stood up toe to toe to Ray. And she was dressed like something from...

"Woodstock?" he finally asked.

"What?" She stared at him blankly.

"Your clothes. You look like a hippie or something. Did you get to go to Woodstock?" He felt stupid asking, but he had seen footage on the telly, and he finally felt that he had pinned down her look.

"Well, um..." The controller didn't know what to say. She actually had been at the famous festival, had been backstage listening to Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townsend arguing about who would go on first, had been covered in mud and deafened by the sounds. That wasn't why she was there, of course, but still... "Actually yes, I was there. You would have loved it. Chris, you said your name was?" And she smiled at him broadly. He smiled back, both at the fact that he had gotten it right and that she had remembered his name.

"Chris, will you watch where you're going?" Ray snarled from the back seat.

"Oh, why don't you leave him alone? You're just jealous because you can't drive!" She had observed carefully and honed that barb for maximum hurtfulness. Ray folded his arms even tighter across his chest and mumbled something to himself. The controller turned her attention back to Chris. "And where are we headed now, Chris?"

"Well, we got a name from the shooter on a bloke who might be running some guns, so we're supposed to be headed down to find him. But we thought..."

"Yes?"

"Well, we thought we'd head down the pub since it's on the way. If that's alright with you."

That was more than alright with her. She felt like she could eat the covering off of the seats of the vehicle. And she was also sure that she could convince one of these two to pay for her meal. So when the vehicle came to a halt outside of a small establishment, she was the first one out of the vehicle and through the door. "The Railway Arms," she read out loud. "How quaint." She stepped up to the bar confidently and was about to speak when a familiar voice stopped her. "What are you doing here?"

"Nelson?" She was stunned. She hadn't seen Nelson since her first assignment. "What are you doing here?"

Static

Static

DI Sam Tyler was on his knees on the floor yet again, and frankly, he was sick of it. It seemed to him that he had spent the better part of the last two years of his life viewing the world from a perspective approximately 18 inches lower than everyone else. When would it end? He was tired of being punched, kicked, handcuffed to furniture, tied up, beaten up, yelled at and generally abused. Why was he even putting up with it?

Two reasons came to mind. Annie, of course. And, he had to admit, Gene. He genuinely liked Gene, although he would never confess it out loud. It was hard to not like Gene, actually. He was a force of nature that swept over you like a storm. You simply couldn't resist him. He wouldn't let you.

Annie, on the other hand, had gently found her way into a corner of his heart that he had been previously unaware of. He could close his eyes and remember every outline of her face, her hair, her eyes. He had honestly loved Maya, but he had always kept her at a distance, knowing that he would have to leave her someday. She had felt that distance and had tried to fight it, but in the end it wasn't enough. Annie, on the other hand, had been unwilling to be satisfied with only a part of Sam. She had asked him to stay with her, and he had promised he would. He had even given her token of his sincerity. And after all of that, now she was...

"Gone. She's gone." He reached out to the spot where she had been standing seconds before and grasped the empty air. He had never felt so helpless or alone in his life as he felt at that instant. His hands dropped to the floor to steady himself as room began spinning around him. How could this have possibly happened?

He turned part way around to see his misson controller sprawled on the floor next to him. He didn't know for sure what feeling was stronger at the moment, his shock at seeing her or his complete and bitter anger at what had happened. He wasn't sure how, but it had to be her doing. He reached down and pulled her partially from the floor. "This is your fault," he hissed through clenched teeth. "Why did you have to come looking for me? Why couldn't you just leave me alone?" She looked at him with a dazed expression, uncomprehending. He let go of her and slumped further to the floor, covering his face with his hands.

The controller struggled to a sitting position, trying to remember what had happened. It had all transpired to quickly, she wasn't certain she could trust that it had happened at all. She recalled transporting smoothly into 1973 without incident. She had found herself in an undeveloped wasteland, but that was as it should have been. It would not do to transport into the middle of a crowded city center with hundreds of civilians looking on. She had known that she would find him at CID, so she had gone there without a second thought, and she had been shown into the squad room without so much as a second look. It was at this point that things had gone downhill quickly.

Sam had seen her standing there and come over to where she was waiting, demanding to know what she was doing there. A young woman sitting at a nearby desk had taken a sudden interest in their conversation and had walked quickly over to a nearby filing cabinet, making a great show of looking for some report, then turning to ask Sam where she might find it. Even after he had told her where to look, she had continued hovering there, eyes glaring in her direction.

Then suddenly, there had been shouting in the hallway, and she had heard a gunshot. The young woman who had been jealously guarding Sam had cried out, but when they had turned to her to see what was the matter, she had slumped to the floor clutching her chest. Sam had fallen to his knees next to her, calling her name, reaching out for her, but in an instant of time, she had disappeared. Someone somewhere had cried out a warning to get down, and she had complied without thinking or even looking around her to see where she might land. When she finally came around, it was to hear Sam screaming an accusation at her as he shook her awake. Her fault? How could any of this be her fault?

"My fault? What are you talking about?" She looked around the room unsteadily. "Where is everyone?"

"She's gone, and it's your fault. If you hadn't come looking for me, this wouldn't have happened."

"What? What were we supposed to do? You disappeared and then reappeared in another time, you wouldn't respond to our attempts to contact you. Did you think I would just give up?"

"Give up? You didn't even activate a return beacon! Do you know how long it took for me to figure out what happened? I was bouncing around like a pinball, not knowing what was happening or why, until it finally, finally, occured to me that it was all a stupid accident, every bit of it. I wasn't supposed to have come here when I did in the first place, and I wasn't supposed to have gone back to 2006. When my life was in danger, I was supposed to have gone back to Base. But you didn't bother to switch on the beacon to bring me back, now, did you? Once I realized that, I came back here, and I was going to stay here. Forever. With Annie. But now she's gone, because you finally decided to switch on a beacon and come looking for me."

The controller looked around the room again, searching for a sign of the young woman she had vaguely remembered seeing earlier. Where was she? What could possibly have happened to her? It seemed as if she had been shot, hit by a stray bullet flying randomly through the squad room. How could she have just disappeared...

"Surely she didn't transport back to the base...I mean, how could she have? She didn't even have a transponder."

"I gave her mine. Didn't tell her what it was, of course. I just gave it to her as a token that I was serious when I said I'd stay with her. She wore it all the time."

"Why on earth did you do something like that?"

"I didn't have any more use for it." He stopped to consider. It had been a foolish thing to do, he realized now. But he was sure he had deactivated it before he gave it to her. He was sure of it. "You've got to bring her back."

The controller nodded gravely. That much was very true. "I'll do my best." She reached for her transponder, preparing to activate the transporter. But Sam's hand suddenly shot out and caught her wrist. "No. You'll do better than that." And before she could react, he had snatched her transponder from her hand. "You can stay here and explain to him what's going on." And an instant later, he was gone.

"Explain what to who?" she said out loud to the empty air.

"Well, you could start by explaining just who you think you are and what you're doing in my department!" The bellowing voice from behind her made her nearly jump out of her skin, and she whirled around to find herself staring at the god-awfulest tie she had ever seen in any decade of any century she had ever been in. She found herself looking up and then up again in an attempt to find a face to talk to.

"I'm, I'm..." she groped for words. "I'm filling for Sam. He had to take care of something. Emergency came up."

"What, a bird filling in as my DI? No way I'm having another woman on my team. I've already got Cartwright, and that's one too many as it is. Where is she, anyway?"

"Um, yes, about that. She and Sam had to go..."

"Oh, let me guess, back to Hyde?"

"You know about, about Hyde?"

"More than you might think, sweet cheeks. More than you might think."

Reception

There is still life on Mars.

I think I just created a monster.


Reception

She stared blankly at the console in front of her, gripping the grab bar that presented itself helpfully to one side of the screen. It seemed funny to her that after all the centuries of technological advance and development the consoles should still be sporting such a primitive feature. Not that she objected, mind you; it was coming in quite handy at the moment.

It seemed hard to believe that it was all over. After all of the planning and training, after two years of monitoring and hard work trying to keep track of the operative in her care, the supervisor had simply shut her mission down. Just like that. She had objected, of course, but the supervisor was only following protocol. She had wanted to at least send someone to see if he was alive or dead, but that was considered a waste of time and manpower. Other operatives had disappeared, their transponders going dead in the middle of a mission. The first time it had happened, they had sent out several other operatives, only to discover that the missing agent had decided to 'go native,' so to speak, and had simply shut down the transponder, choosing to live happily ever after in a different time and place.

So she was left to grip the panic bar on her monitor and contemplate the unruly stack of paperwork she would have to tame in order to close out the case. A person's life, reduced to a stack of papers. It seemed wrong somehow, but she was at a loss at to what to do about it. A sudden voice at her elbow snapped her from her reverie. "Excuse me, ma'am?"

She turned to face the voice and saw an eager young recruit standing, no, almost hopping, next to her desk. He looked like he might have just fallen out of the cradle and into the too large uniform he was struggling to fill. He clutched nervously at the binder in his hands and looked at her expectantly. She finally came to her senses enough to speak. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, ma'am, my instructor directed me to come to you for my orientation?" He actually managed to make the simple statement sound like a pleading question. She sighed. Anything but this. "Have a seat, I'll be right with you."

She slammed into the supervisor's office with as much emotion as she could muster. "Are you kidding me? Orientation for a new recruit?"

"You need to move on and get your mind on your job."

"I need to finish up the paperwork to close out the case! Maybe I can figure out what went wrong in the process."

"No, you need to follow orders, and I am ordering you to supervise this recruit's orientation."

"But..."

The supervisor stood abruptly. "Do you really think that I enjoy the thought of losing a man? You know this project is too important to just throw away anyone. But he's gone and we need to deal with that. Now go do your job."

If the young man noticed the slamming of the door, he pretended not to notice. Perhaps he was just overwhelmed by the thought of being here. Maybe it was a dream come true for him. Maybe he was just not very observant.

She fairly threw herself into her chair and rummaged through her desktop in a huffy manner. Finally, she yanked out a binder and snapped it open to the front page. "Fine. Hello. I am Controller...um, I am one of the mission controllers here. I imagine you have probably already heard about the history of the Mars Project from your classroom instructor, so I'll just skip that part." She moved to flip a large handful of pages toward the back of the binder, but the recruit interrupted her.

"No, well, I mean, we've had some history of the project, but I've always wondered where they got the name."

"The name." That, she thought, was a good question. She had always found it bizarre that when the early pioneers had first reached for the skies, they had chosen names that had little to do with their goals. Naming the missions after ancient deities was perhaps understandable, but naming them after deities whose functions had no remote association with the goals of the mission was mystifying. What had the messenger of the gods had to do with the first orbit of the Earth? Or the god of the sun with the first landings on the Moon? What, indeed, did the god of war have to do with their ostensibly peaceful work here? "The name." She looked up to see the youngster staring at her expectantly, his writing instrument hovering over his notepad, eager to record her every word. "I'm afraid that information is classified." She imagined that was probably true. If it wasn't, it was a good enough excuse.

He gave a disappointed sigh that she blatantly disregarded as she continued to flip past large sections of the orientation manual. "The greatest part of the work done here revolves around monitoring the movements and actions of the field operatives by tracking their transponders. We also set up and maintain the guide beacons that direct..." Her voice trailed off thoughtfully. They sat in awkward silence for a moment, until the young recruit finally worked up the courage to clear his throat politely.

"Hmmm?" She regarded him blankly as if she had never seen him before.

"Guide beacons?" he suggested helpfully.

"Why weren't the return beacons activated?" He stared at her and struggled to make sense of the question. Was this some sort of test? What was she expecting him to say? He didn't dare say something stupid like 'I don't know.'

"Well, I suppose, I mean...should they have been?"

She regarded his question with mounting excitement. "No, of course, you're right. The return beacons are only active when there is either an expectation of an imminent case closure or the agent has signaled an emergency. The 2006 return beacon wasn't on and the 1973 return beacon wouldn't have been activated for quite a while yet. He's bouncing back and forth between the two years because there's no return beacon!" She jumped up, grabbed his hand and practically shouted, "Come with me!"

He eagerly followed the controller down the nearest corridor, struggling to keep up with her rapid pace. Whatever it was that he had said, it had been the right thing. He had passed his first test. He could only guess at what they were doing now.

She couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it sooner. The guide beacons were set up to backup the programming on the transporters. If the transporters were accidentally triggered without having a date programmed, they would follow the nearest beacon. That much they had already considered. Return beacons could be used if a field operative ran into an emergency situation in which there was no time to program a date to return to the base. The undocumented feature of the transporters made the return beacons even more important. The transponders monitored basic health indicators for each operative. If they sensed unusual heart rate, blood pressure or any signs of severe distress, they would trigger the transporter, which was supposed to follow the nearest beacon. It had been assumed at the time of design that the nearest beacon would be a return beacon. What if the return beacons weren't activated? What would happen then?

The pair fairly burst into small room situated off of one of the side corridors they had wound through. While the Controller busied herself with a multitude of switches and settings, her bewildered companion tried to find a place to sit down out of her way. He sincerely hoped that she wasn't going to ask him anything complicated about the room they were in, or even how to find their way back to where they started, for that matter. He felt overwhelmed and excited at the same time. "What can I do to help?"

"You are going to do something very important. I am going to demonstrate to you just how a transponder tracks a beacon, and I'm putting you in charge of making sure that the return beacon remains activated so that I can return to just this exact time and location. No matter what anyone says or does, no matter how long it may seem to take, even if it seems as though nothing is happening, don't move from this spot and make certain that this indicator remains green at all times and does not go out."

"And what should I do if it does go out?"

"Just press this control until it comes back on."

"And what should I do if..." But before he could even finish his next question, she had disappeared as if into thin air. He had to admit that he was slightly disappointed. He had expected something a bit more spectacular, a flash of light, an electric sizzle in the air, something, anything. But she was simply there one second and gone the next. He looked around the room as if to assure himself that she was really gone and not just hiding somewhere behind one of the consoles. He was alone.

The minutes dragged by slowly. If he had some way of occupying himself, he might not have become so bored, but as it was, he was having a difficult time keeping his eyes open, much less focusing on the green light on the panel. This must be part of the test, he mused to himself, considering all of the possibilities of exciting things that might happen. None of them seemed to be happening, however. He found himself remembering a definition someone had coined about certain high stress occupations. "Hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror." 'Some punctuation might be nice right about now,' was the last thing he remembered thinking before drifting off to sleep.

The shrill scream that woke him seemed like it had come from another world. He couldn't even imagine what the sound was until jumped to his feet and saw a woman's form (it must be the Controller, he thought) standing in the middle of the room, her back towards him. "Are you alright?" he found himself shouting.

She spun around to face him, her eyes wide with terror, mouth wide open as if to scream again. Her clothing was most definitely from different time and place and she held a small piece of jewellry in her trembling hands. He stared stupidly at her for what seemed an eternity and finally managed to find his voice. "You're not the Controller. Who are you?"

She said nothing and stepped back away from him, searching for somewhere to hide. He decided to try again, this time in a more reassuring tone. "Don't be afraid, you're perfectly safe. You've arrived in one of the Base control rooms. I'm Cadet Evans. What's your name?"

After a moment, she finally calmed enough to speak.

"I'm Annie."