Mr Drewer was beginning to dislike this day more and more.
There were few things that irritated him more than the unexpected but one of them was when the unexpected made people anxious. Anxiety was rarely productive in his experience. Anxious people were generally irritable, annoying and worst of all stopped making rational, reasoned decisions and started being emotional. Mr Drewer much preferred it if anxiety could be avoided completely.
Unfortunately for Mr Drewer there was certainly a lot of anxiety to be found in the control room at this precise moment in time. Mostly it was almost visibly emanating from the poor central observation technician that had three of the company's most senior managers pacing around him and asking him lots of questions he generally didn't seem to have any answers for. Well, to be precise one of them was pacing, but Malcom Jenkins, the companys most senior observer, was pacing with more than enough ferocity to more than make up for that Mr Drewer was quite comfortable standing calmly at the back of the room.
It didn't help that Jenkins was not the smallest of gentleman in girth and a man of his stature pacing ferociously made for an amount of sweat, and with it body odour, that just reminded Mr Drewer of another good reason for anxiety being best avoided.
The manilla folder and the unexpected new arrival this morning had been just the start of things that Mr Drewer was going to have to tolerate today. No sooner had he dispatched Tobias Gordon to intercept the new arrival than he had received several phone calls from a very anxious observation department informing him that there was something going on that he should probably be aware of. That as it turned out was an understatement, a rather serious one, and it wasn't just something that he needed to be aware of, it was something that Jenkins most definitely needed to be aware of as well, and Mr Drewer had thought it prudent to involve Mr Nixon as well, the companys head of security. So now the three of them had left their secretaries hastily cancelling their meetings and clearing their schedules while they had made their way down to the control room to try and get the details of what had actually happened.
It wasn't so much that the three of them didn't understand what they were being told. They were all experienced and would be the type of employee that would generally be referred to as having been 'around the block' more than a couple of times. It was more that what they were being told didn't make any sense. It was one of those situations where what was happening shouldn't have been possible but clearly was happening. It couldn't be denied, had been checked, double checked and triple checked and was most definitely not an error or a false positive. It had happened. It just shouldn't have been possible.
Mr Drewer felt it was his responsibility to try and focus people. There must be something they were missing here. Things like this don't just happen. People is his line of work know full well that nothing actually just happens any more. The universe may have its own ebb and flow but for centuries now there have been people pulling at the strings, they didn't always know what they were doing, or what the results would be, but they were there pulling and poking. Whatever had happened in the hours between him leaving the office the night before and this morning had probably not just happened.
He had asked the observation technician, who clearly wished this hadn't happened on his shift, to explain again slowly.
“It's like it all just started to unravel sir,” explained the technician, whose name was Tim Watkins and according to the personnel report Mr Drewer had retrieved from the system before starting the meeting was a pretty normal member of staff, as normal as any of them were at any rate, “It started out slow at first. The night shift noted some slight variations in the far fringes of the possibility map. Nothing that we hadn't seen before, at least that's what we figured to start with, just some minor adaptations in some of the more obscure time-lines, but it accelerated.”
“and now the central timeline actually ends again?” Mr Drewer asked, repeating the question he had asked several times over the last ten minutes hoping someone had made a mistake.
“Yes sir, within an hour it went from extending out beyond our longest perception projections as it has been for years and then suddenly it was just ending. You could actually see the graphs moving on the main display. It was like the timeline was just shrinking, some kind of cascade effect. All the surrounding lines started retracting first, and some even completely collapsed, then before we had even had a chance to confirm those periphery retractions the central timeline started to collapse.”
Mr Drewer stroked his chin pensively, “how is that even possible?”
“Just what I wanted to know, exactly what I wanted to know” Jenkins interrupted, clearly exasperated, “this is beyond any tampering that I have ever seen. I mean how long did it take us to prepare the big twist in eighty-nine?”
“Two years, nine months, two weeks, four days and about three hours, give or take six minutes.” Mr Drewer answered almost instinctively in a way that clearly made the others in the room uncomfortable, “and two hundred and sixteen field operatives.” he added for good measure.
“Your precision scares me sometimes Drewer,” Jenkins muttered, “but that is exactly my point. Even if the opposition somehow managed to pull off a major coup, I have never, ever, in over a hundred years serving as chief observer, or in any of the records going back to the formation of the company, seen anything like this. We know what it takes to shift the timelines even a little, months of work, lots of time, resources and operatives and at best that usually only gives us a chance of moving things in the direction we wanted. Watkins how is this possible?”
Watkins didn't seem to be sure whether he was actually supposed to answer that since it was clear none of them knew. “We honestly don't know sir. I have checked over the data several times.” he said stammering a little, still clearly nervous, “This has been confirmed by all the regular cross processing rules. I even ran it past three of the old mystics just to be sure and they all show the same thing.”
“We have never seen a timeline ending this early either,” Jenkins interrupted again, still pacing backwards and forwards behind poor Watkins, “I mean the timeline ending this year? That is plain insanity, the earliest date we have ever seen before this morning was in 2248, and even that I am not sure was an accurate reading. I mean we all know 2252, and the importance there, but we have managed to keep that at bay for two decades now. Did you check the corollary data Watkins?”
“Ye sir we did.” Watkins answered quickly, “twice actually, just to be sure.”
Jenkins seemed to pick up his pace, “We need to control this, I presume we have this information under lock-down.”
“Of course sir. Procedures were followed to the letter, as soon as I was aware of the scale I called you all immediately. The readings aren't made available till after processing anyway as you know, so this hasn't reached beyond the actual seers themselves and the senior observer on shift, Leah James last night, and me on this morning. I gave the processors the emergency cover data as instructed by security protocols, so the rest of the company should be in the dark.”
“I presume your people have confirmed the same thing as the observers Mr Nixon?” Mr Drewer inquired, looking toward the head of security on the other side of the room, who had so far just listened and remained silent.
Mr Drewer respected Mr Nixon immensely, he was not one given to panic or anxiety, something he personally thought was essential for someone who looked after the company's security. He was aware that many people considered Mr Nixon to be someone that any normal person, even immortal people, should be well within their rights to be scared by and afraid of. Not just because of what he did, but also because at six foot four he was an imposing and very well built man. The type of man you immediately presumed knew several ways to kill you with his bare hands. He also had the most startling eyes. Even Mr Drewer had to admit that Mr Nixon's eyes could easily unsettle you. Maybe it was just the jarring nature of seeing a tall Indian gentleman with sky blue eyes, something you just weren't used to seeing, but they weren't just blue, they were the most startling, piercing and unnerving sky blue you could possibly imagine. The kind of eyes that in this day and age you might have presumed were a result of the person wearing some of those fake contact lens, only if in this case his eyes had been like that since the time of the crusades by all accounts.
“Yes we confirmed it as well,” Mr Nixon replied. He actually preferred to be referred to as just Nixon, but had given up trying to get Mr Drewer to drop the mister some time ago, “It does indeed seem like like this was some kind of sudden event, we had no inkling something was up. All the usual channels were as normal security wise, we haven't even heard a peep out of any of our contacts. No street chatter, even the carnival folk weren't twitchy before this morning.”
“Nothing at all? I don't like nothing, don't like the sound of that at all,” Jenkins muttered, “do you think this could be sabotage? Could they have done this?”
Nixon shook his head slowly, “I doubt it, to me this seems like some kind of freak paradox or naturally occurring time shift, it's not without precedent. I want to have some of my guys look through the patterns first before I make any judgements, but we might be dealing with something the universe has decided to throw at us.”
“You don't suspect anything at all?”
“Not from the opposition anyway. If anything the early reports I am getting show a distinct lack of activity there. If this was some kind of mass manipulation attempt they would have needed to mobilise a lot of operatives or agents and I just haven't seen any evidence of that.”
“That's if you people are doing your jobs right.” Jenkins snapped to a sudden silence in the room. Poor Tim Watkins was seemingly very uncomfortable at the thought of being caught in a managerial crossfire, particularly if Nixon was involved.
Nixon though just laughed quietly and smiled, “Now you are just being ornery my friend. There is absolutely no need for us to lose our tempers and throw about blame. As I see it there is no blame to allocate here yet.”
“Precisely,” Mr Drewer echoed, “Malcolm please do try and calm down. However we do need to try and ascertain exactly what we are dealing with. I for one have no intention of seeing the world come to an end on my shift. Besides I have a holiday booked in the Seychelles for January and it would be most inconvenient if the world came to an end before we even get to Christmas.”
There were few things that irritated him more than the unexpected but one of them was when the unexpected made people anxious. Anxiety was rarely productive in his experience. Anxious people were generally irritable, annoying and worst of all stopped making rational, reasoned decisions and started being emotional. Mr Drewer much preferred it if anxiety could be avoided completely.
Unfortunately for Mr Drewer there was certainly a lot of anxiety to be found in the control room at this precise moment in time. Mostly it was almost visibly emanating from the poor central observation technician that had three of the company's most senior managers pacing around him and asking him lots of questions he generally didn't seem to have any answers for. Well, to be precise one of them was pacing, but Malcom Jenkins, the companys most senior observer, was pacing with more than enough ferocity to more than make up for that Mr Drewer was quite comfortable standing calmly at the back of the room.
It didn't help that Jenkins was not the smallest of gentleman in girth and a man of his stature pacing ferociously made for an amount of sweat, and with it body odour, that just reminded Mr Drewer of another good reason for anxiety being best avoided.
The manilla folder and the unexpected new arrival this morning had been just the start of things that Mr Drewer was going to have to tolerate today. No sooner had he dispatched Tobias Gordon to intercept the new arrival than he had received several phone calls from a very anxious observation department informing him that there was something going on that he should probably be aware of. That as it turned out was an understatement, a rather serious one, and it wasn't just something that he needed to be aware of, it was something that Jenkins most definitely needed to be aware of as well, and Mr Drewer had thought it prudent to involve Mr Nixon as well, the companys head of security. So now the three of them had left their secretaries hastily cancelling their meetings and clearing their schedules while they had made their way down to the control room to try and get the details of what had actually happened.
It wasn't so much that the three of them didn't understand what they were being told. They were all experienced and would be the type of employee that would generally be referred to as having been 'around the block' more than a couple of times. It was more that what they were being told didn't make any sense. It was one of those situations where what was happening shouldn't have been possible but clearly was happening. It couldn't be denied, had been checked, double checked and triple checked and was most definitely not an error or a false positive. It had happened. It just shouldn't have been possible.
Mr Drewer felt it was his responsibility to try and focus people. There must be something they were missing here. Things like this don't just happen. People is his line of work know full well that nothing actually just happens any more. The universe may have its own ebb and flow but for centuries now there have been people pulling at the strings, they didn't always know what they were doing, or what the results would be, but they were there pulling and poking. Whatever had happened in the hours between him leaving the office the night before and this morning had probably not just happened.
He had asked the observation technician, who clearly wished this hadn't happened on his shift, to explain again slowly.
“It's like it all just started to unravel sir,” explained the technician, whose name was Tim Watkins and according to the personnel report Mr Drewer had retrieved from the system before starting the meeting was a pretty normal member of staff, as normal as any of them were at any rate, “It started out slow at first. The night shift noted some slight variations in the far fringes of the possibility map. Nothing that we hadn't seen before, at least that's what we figured to start with, just some minor adaptations in some of the more obscure time-lines, but it accelerated.”
“and now the central timeline actually ends again?” Mr Drewer asked, repeating the question he had asked several times over the last ten minutes hoping someone had made a mistake.
“Yes sir, within an hour it went from extending out beyond our longest perception projections as it has been for years and then suddenly it was just ending. You could actually see the graphs moving on the main display. It was like the timeline was just shrinking, some kind of cascade effect. All the surrounding lines started retracting first, and some even completely collapsed, then before we had even had a chance to confirm those periphery retractions the central timeline started to collapse.”
Mr Drewer stroked his chin pensively, “how is that even possible?”
“Just what I wanted to know, exactly what I wanted to know” Jenkins interrupted, clearly exasperated, “this is beyond any tampering that I have ever seen. I mean how long did it take us to prepare the big twist in eighty-nine?”
“Two years, nine months, two weeks, four days and about three hours, give or take six minutes.” Mr Drewer answered almost instinctively in a way that clearly made the others in the room uncomfortable, “and two hundred and sixteen field operatives.” he added for good measure.
“Your precision scares me sometimes Drewer,” Jenkins muttered, “but that is exactly my point. Even if the opposition somehow managed to pull off a major coup, I have never, ever, in over a hundred years serving as chief observer, or in any of the records going back to the formation of the company, seen anything like this. We know what it takes to shift the timelines even a little, months of work, lots of time, resources and operatives and at best that usually only gives us a chance of moving things in the direction we wanted. Watkins how is this possible?”
Watkins didn't seem to be sure whether he was actually supposed to answer that since it was clear none of them knew. “We honestly don't know sir. I have checked over the data several times.” he said stammering a little, still clearly nervous, “This has been confirmed by all the regular cross processing rules. I even ran it past three of the old mystics just to be sure and they all show the same thing.”
“We have never seen a timeline ending this early either,” Jenkins interrupted again, still pacing backwards and forwards behind poor Watkins, “I mean the timeline ending this year? That is plain insanity, the earliest date we have ever seen before this morning was in 2248, and even that I am not sure was an accurate reading. I mean we all know 2252, and the importance there, but we have managed to keep that at bay for two decades now. Did you check the corollary data Watkins?”
“Ye sir we did.” Watkins answered quickly, “twice actually, just to be sure.”
Jenkins seemed to pick up his pace, “We need to control this, I presume we have this information under lock-down.”
“Of course sir. Procedures were followed to the letter, as soon as I was aware of the scale I called you all immediately. The readings aren't made available till after processing anyway as you know, so this hasn't reached beyond the actual seers themselves and the senior observer on shift, Leah James last night, and me on this morning. I gave the processors the emergency cover data as instructed by security protocols, so the rest of the company should be in the dark.”
“I presume your people have confirmed the same thing as the observers Mr Nixon?” Mr Drewer inquired, looking toward the head of security on the other side of the room, who had so far just listened and remained silent.
Mr Drewer respected Mr Nixon immensely, he was not one given to panic or anxiety, something he personally thought was essential for someone who looked after the company's security. He was aware that many people considered Mr Nixon to be someone that any normal person, even immortal people, should be well within their rights to be scared by and afraid of. Not just because of what he did, but also because at six foot four he was an imposing and very well built man. The type of man you immediately presumed knew several ways to kill you with his bare hands. He also had the most startling eyes. Even Mr Drewer had to admit that Mr Nixon's eyes could easily unsettle you. Maybe it was just the jarring nature of seeing a tall Indian gentleman with sky blue eyes, something you just weren't used to seeing, but they weren't just blue, they were the most startling, piercing and unnerving sky blue you could possibly imagine. The kind of eyes that in this day and age you might have presumed were a result of the person wearing some of those fake contact lens, only if in this case his eyes had been like that since the time of the crusades by all accounts.
“Yes we confirmed it as well,” Mr Nixon replied. He actually preferred to be referred to as just Nixon, but had given up trying to get Mr Drewer to drop the mister some time ago, “It does indeed seem like like this was some kind of sudden event, we had no inkling something was up. All the usual channels were as normal security wise, we haven't even heard a peep out of any of our contacts. No street chatter, even the carnival folk weren't twitchy before this morning.”
“Nothing at all? I don't like nothing, don't like the sound of that at all,” Jenkins muttered, “do you think this could be sabotage? Could they have done this?”
Nixon shook his head slowly, “I doubt it, to me this seems like some kind of freak paradox or naturally occurring time shift, it's not without precedent. I want to have some of my guys look through the patterns first before I make any judgements, but we might be dealing with something the universe has decided to throw at us.”
“You don't suspect anything at all?”
“Not from the opposition anyway. If anything the early reports I am getting show a distinct lack of activity there. If this was some kind of mass manipulation attempt they would have needed to mobilise a lot of operatives or agents and I just haven't seen any evidence of that.”
“That's if you people are doing your jobs right.” Jenkins snapped to a sudden silence in the room. Poor Tim Watkins was seemingly very uncomfortable at the thought of being caught in a managerial crossfire, particularly if Nixon was involved.
Nixon though just laughed quietly and smiled, “Now you are just being ornery my friend. There is absolutely no need for us to lose our tempers and throw about blame. As I see it there is no blame to allocate here yet.”
“Precisely,” Mr Drewer echoed, “Malcolm please do try and calm down. However we do need to try and ascertain exactly what we are dealing with. I for one have no intention of seeing the world come to an end on my shift. Besides I have a holiday booked in the Seychelles for January and it would be most inconvenient if the world came to an end before we even get to Christmas.”
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