FATE Inc Prologue - Mr Drewer

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

- Alan Kay -





London – a cold March morning

Damp....

That’s the only word Mr Drewer could use to describe it, he hated the wet, but hated this even more. For all his years he couldn’t bring himself to like the London weather. At least with wet you knew where you stood, if it was raining you needed a good umbrella, or even better a roof over your head, preferably with four stout walls, and if you were particularly lucky a good log fire.

This weather though was just plain damp.

It wasn’t raining by any definition you could soundly argue with, say, a good current affairs presenter, but it got you wet, it got you saturated in fact, almost without you noticing. Mr Drewer couldn’t feel any rain drops against his cheeks, but his long grey jacket grew darker and darker as he trudged towards the underground station. His neat grey hair growing less neat, and more matted with every pace.

It was just damp, not even a drizzle really, you can feel a drizzle reasoned Mr Drewer, and this didn’t even impair your view sufficiently to qualify as fog.

He stuck his plain black umbrella above his head and continued, not that it seemed to help all that much as he walked through the damp. There weren’t many occasions when he welcomed setting foot inside an underground station, but this morning was one of those rare exceptions. Even this station was better then the damp. Lower Ormond Road, the one he used every morning, was particularly grim, even on a scale of other underground stations.

He shook the umbrella off purposefully as he descended the steps down under the pavement.

It was busier then normal, the damp always did that he mused to himself, but busy was preferable to damp. At any rate he was the stern looking type that meant most people gave him a wide berth even when space was at a premium. He walked exactly the same twenty-six paces that he took every morning to the gate that lead to the Victoria Line. He approached the two guards just like he did every morning and explained that he had lost his season ticket, was horribly late for a very important appointment, and asked if they would be kind enough to let him through.

They did, just as they did every morning.

Mr Drewer had that kind of effect on people.

Not all employees of the company had that particular ability, but Mr Drewer had developed it into an art form. Whilst ‘selling sand to the Arabs’ or ‘Ice to the Eskimos’ were both atrocious metaphors in his opinion, he had once convinced the Manchester city council planning authority that solar power was the way forward. In his defence the subsequent power shortages were preferable to the fallout that would have occurred had they chosen to build the nuclear power station instead.

He just had a talent for making people believe him, which was useful in his profession.

He often wondered if he had ever been as gullible as London Underground employees, or the members of the Manchester city council planning authority before he had been recruited into the ranks. Not that they had a London Underground four hundred and fifty six years ago, but if they had he really hoped he hadn’t been that weak willed.

He moved down to the platform, just in time to step aboard the train, the beauty of having inside information was that the trains were never late for you, even if they were for everyone else. He barely broke his stride as he marched through the doors and took his usual place on the third seat to the left in the fourth carriage from the front.

The chances of getting a seat every morning on the Underground are pretty much statistically absurd, let alone the same seat, but when you were in the business of logistics like Mr Drewer was it was surprisingly easy. Being at the right place at the right time was pretty much essential in his line of work.

He flicked open his copy of the Telegraph and scanned the headlines; it was always nice to read about the accomplishments of the other departments. Today’s highlights were the ending of two international conflicts, the start of a war, rising inflation and a last minute reprieve for the sub post office of a small village in Wales which had been due to close.

A local pensioner reported that it was ‘very sensible’ of the Post Office to keep rural services running for the community. Mr Drewer smiled to himself, if only they knew that all that fuss was over a single letter that would be sent next week by that pensioner, one Mavis Knowles, and absolutely had to get to it’s destination at a certain time. He knew that no-one would ever know that that letter was every bit as integral to the ongoing survival of the planet as the fact that the UN general secretary had been successful in his negotiations with militant rebels in the middle east.

The self-important politicians of the world would have a nervous breakdown if they knew their scheming and attempts at manipulation had about the same impact on the future of the planet as a single raindrop does in making a tree grow. Fate was funny like that; little things like Mrs Knowles letter often had a bigger impact then any of the latest trade embargos or political brinkmanship.

Working with fate, or F.A.T.E incorporated, as it was now known was even funnier, if you had a slightly twisted outlook on what qualified as humorous. Mr Drewer had just finished filling in the crossword as the train pulled up to his stop, he was never too sure why he felt obliged to fill in a puzzle he knew the answers to, but did so all the same. It was part of his routine and routine was important to Mr Drewer.

His mobile phone vibrated slowly as the train came to a stop. Flicking up and cover and reading the text message that had been sent to him he turned and smiled at the rather miserable looking lady who had been sitting next to him.

Well, it passed as a smile at least; good humour was not one of Mr Drewer’s stronger assets.

“Cheer up,” he quipped quietly, observing she was reading an article about a rollover Jackpot in that night’s lottery, “might be the day to buy a ticket, you never know.”

The woman stared back at him quizzically and raised an eyebrow. Londoners were not used to people speaking to them on the Underground, let alone strangers, unless they were inquiring as to the possibility of a charitable donation.

Mr Drewer shrugged and got off the train, glancing at his watch he noted he was almsot precisely thirty seconds later then he usually would have been. He picked up his pace slightly to compensate.

He did wish that they wouldn’t drop those last minute jobs on him. Whilst sure there was a very good reason the miserable looking lady needed to win the lottery that night, he did wish there had been a field operative available. He only had a certain tolerance for conversing with the masses, even if they didn’t feel inclined to converse back.

He wondered how the lady would describe him exactly when telling her children of the stranger that prompted her to buy that winning lottery ticket. He made a mental note to check her file later to make sure she wasn’t too unflattering when the time came.

He checked his watch as he stepped back out into the damp. Good, back on schedule, he thought to himself.

He turned and walked the short distance out of the Tottenham Court Road tube station and round the corner onto New Oxford Street before making his way down to Bloomsbury Way. The office itself was just another anonymous London building, but that of course was the intention. The beauty of London, and cities like it was that people rarely noticed things that lay right in front of them. People could come and go as they pleased and pretty much no-one would notice. The more observant might have noticed that those people coming and going from this particular office rarely seemed to change, and the even more eagle eyed that happened to pass by everyday might have noticed that those people never really seemed to age any either.

That was another perk of the job, or at least they called it a perk. Mr Drewer had gone through a phase of wishing that time had stopped for him a decade or two earlier then it did. The aches and pains of a fifty eight year old body were bad enough without them being preserved perfectly since the fifteen forties. He had become accustomed to it now. You had to really; being technically immortal would have been a fairly miserable existence otherwise.

The office itself appeared to be just another of the older office blocks of central London that had been ‘renovated’ in the Seventies and was now a fairly nondescript edifice of concrete and glass. Uniform grey blocks protruded out at odd angles at the side of each window. Mr Drewer was sure there was good reason for the architectural obsession with concrete at that time but couldn’t quite remember what. He couldn’t keep up with the work of all the other departments, but he distinctly remembered the company facilities manager apologising in advance for the eyesore, but explaining that it was vital to keep the building from looking incongruous with the rest of the street. If all their neighbours were going down the ugly concrete look then the company would have to follow suit. Not that it was seen as ‘ugly concrete’ at the time, misguided architects the world over were certain they were ushering in the ‘brave new world’ of the twenty first century.

Sometimes Mr Drewer wished he’d been able to warn them.

There were rules about things like that though; strictly not allowed the whole ‘letting them know their future’ thing. It was always far too messy. Walking up the steps to the office he had the strangest of feelings. The feeling that something was different, or misplaced...or quite possibly...just wrong. He paused for a moment to consider this, he didn't like such feelings creeping up on him. It wasn't normal and it was generally not indicative of him being about to have a good day.

He nodded to Tony the doorman as the door was opened for him and forced another of his weak smiles for the receptionist Hillary.

“Morning Mr Drewer,” she chimed, “there’s a new starter to be picked up today.”

“Really?” he asked, it wasn’t often someone in his position was surprised.

“Yes, the observation department do apologise,” she explained, “it was a last minute things apparently, something to do with conflicting interpersonal event horizons or something like that, you know how I am with the technical mumbo jumbo.”

“It was a cock-up then.”

“Yes Mr Drewer. Most likely”

“The file is on my desk?”

“Yes Mr Drewer, with your coffee.”

“Thank you Hillary, have a good day.” He said as he turned and entered the elevator, the door sliding open conveniently in front of him. Even amongst the other employees his sense of timing was regarded as unnerving. Mr Drewer never actually seemed to have to open a door, wait for a lift or stand aside for anyone coming the other way. It just kind of happened around him.

His days were always timed immaculately, you could say that he took everything that FATE Inc was about and crafted a perfectly efficient working day each and every day he entered the office. Not only was he not used to surprises he did not like them at all. So it was with slight annoyance that he eyed the brown manila folder on his desk when he entered his office on the fifteenth floor. He sighed and took a sip of his coffee for a moment before picking the folder up and scanning the summary page at the front. Noting that this one could have been picked up earlier, but was certainly a strange anomoly he made a quick note to ask Hillary to draft up a stern reprimand for whoever the duty manager was on the observation shifts recently, and another to send the file down to research to have them give it a once over, better safe than sorry.

Switching his computer on, he flicked open his old leather bound file-o-fax to see who he had available for the pickup whilst the grey machine whirred and kicked into life. It looked like he didn’t have a choice, it would have to be Tobias Gordon, hardly his preferred option for what was often a tricky assignment, but all his other greeters were otherwise engaged.

This kind of thing was why he hated surprises. He rapped his fingers nervously on the tabletop as he waited for the computer to let him log in. He was now eight minutes behind schedule as well. He just had to hope that Gordon wouldn’t make a mess of this one.

‘Hoping’ wasn’t something that came naturally to him either though….