Of Friends and Dodos
Disclaimer: none of the characters are mine, but belong to Impossible Pictures™.
On that day, nothing was foreshadowing anything extraordinary, as far as Abby was concerned. The wind was blowing, the sun was shining, the clouds were moving across the sky, no time anomalies or anything bizarre seemed to be appear on the horizon – in short, it was shaping up to be a very good, normal day.
"Hey, Abby. We just got several new Brown's automatic rifles," captain Ryan greeted her when the young woman came to the Home Office. "Want to see us test them?"
…Well, a normal day for someone who worked for the Home Office's time anomalies' field team, at any rate.
"Why not?" Abby shrugged in agreement. "Unless more flying reptiles or whatever make an appearance, we probably have free time-"
"Am I interrupting something?" Helen spoke up, looking rather mischievous. "Eh?"
"No," captain Ryan replied dryly, "you haven't. What's up? Did Connor or Claudia send you to tell us something?"
"No," Helen shook her head. "Connor actually went to Lester with a couple of resumes – apparently, his friends or neighbours or both or something want in."
The other two just blinked. "You say that someone else wants to work here?" Abby said incredulously. "Make no mistake, it is a good job, it just takes a certain presence of mind – you think they got it?"
"Lorraine certainly thinks so!" Claudia joined the discussion. "She's Lester's secretary," she added, seeing that the others were looking somewhat confused. "She thinks that Connor's friends just might get internships here under her supervision."
"O-oh!" Abby replied, finally understanding. "And what does – sir Lester think about it?"
"You want to go and find out?" Claudia asked, looking rather enthusiastic (and slightly mischievous) about it.
The others exchanged looks.
"Oh, yes!"
/
"What do you mean, they want to work here?" the voice of James Lester reached loudly all over their floor. "This is Her Majesty's government here, not some temporary jobs agency! This is beyond- beyond-"
"But, sir Lester," Connor by now was confident enough to argue with his superior, no matter how slightly, "it's hardly a secret what we're doing around London, we just aren't common-place enough to be on the news yet! Besides, they're my friends, what shall I tell them?"
"Tell them they're fired!" Lester snapped.
"Excuse me?"
"Or that they would be rather hired as Argonauts than here! Frankly, judging from their resumes-"
"Sir Lester!" Lorraine suddenly spoke up, seeing how Connor was ready to break down. "That's unreasonable! There's nothing in their resumes that suggests that they can't work here-"
"This is a government facility! We can't just hire people from the street…" Lester paused and gave both Connor and Lorraine hard, hard looks. "Fine. We'll give them temporary internships. But if they screw up, they'll be fired - as in given one last cigarette and fired. Got it?"
"Yes, yes, I got it," Connor said in that sort of a happy tone of voice that implied that it all went clear over his head, and took off.
"And where's he going?" Abby asked no one in particular.
"To his friends," Helen explained cheerfully. "They're waiting in the parking lot."
Claudia stared. "Say what?"
Helen explained.
/
Connor's friends… Abby wasn't sure what to make of them. There was just something about their presence that made her feel uneasy, but for the love of her Abby couldn't figure out what.
"There's something about this that I don't like, but they look harmless," she muttered to Claudia and Helen. "Is it just me?"
"No, it's not just you," Claudia muttered back. "This day, I don't know, it just has an odd feel to it. Sort of like what has happened on the golfing course, only it's not the same."
"Ah, your intuition is developing. How interesting," Helen all but cooed.
Abby eyed the older women warily. At times she thought that something was developing between the two of them, but whether it was romance or just friendship, she wasn't sure. (On the other hand, whatever she and captain Ryan had was friendship, pure and simple, and it was strange. Nice to have, but still strange.)
"What are you talking about?" Claudia asked, indignantly.
"I mean," but whatever Helen meant to say remained unsaid, as a time anomaly appeared. Right in the Home Office, as well. And several turkey-like, feathered creatures came barrelling straight out of them.
"Dodos!" one of Connor's friends (the shorter and fatter one) yelled almost delightfully. "Dodos!"
/
For creatures whose name all but became the byword for stupidity or idiocy (Claudia wasn't exactly sure which), the dodos were proving to be simply nowhere as dumb as their reputation made them to be. Nor were they as slow as they appeared to be. Rather, they ran around pretty quickly, flailing around their smallish wings (that were still capable of delivering some very painful whacks) and snapping their actually not too small beaks.
"Ouch!" Claudia heard somebody exclaim – apparently the dodos were able to bite somebody after all. She turned in the direction of the sound and sure enough, the taller of Connor's two friends (though something made Claudia wonder just for how long they will remain friends) was rubbing his hand that had a rather nasty bite on it and glaring at the dodo (captured by Connor's other friend) in a very ugly manner.
"Excuse me," she interjected calmly (the Home Office had enough trouble with the feathered dodos to add problems with the non-feathered ones on top of it), "but you're Connor's... roommates, right?" (She couldn't even call them his friends; she just couldn't for some reason.) "Come on then, let's get you to the medical wing."
"Thank you, ma'am," the one with the glasses said gratefully. His friend just glared.
There's going to be trouble with this one, I just know it.
/
It took them what appeared to be the better half of the day, but at long last all of the dodos were driven through the time anomaly... that didn't close. "Fancy that!" proclaimed captain Ryan, as everyone, tailed by Helen, snuck a peak through it. "That's... well..."
The Home Office group were standing on a wide, almost endless, green field or meadow, where several time anomalies, beating and pulsing almost in tandem, were located.
"Wow! What would happen if we were to go through one of them?" Connor asked.
The question was largely a rhetorical one, but Helen's answer was anything but. "Well, provided that it won't lead us to a time that's too far in the past or the future for us to survive, we'll find ourselves in a land of wonder, no doubt, that's strange, wonderful, terrible, and it isn't home. And if we stay there for too long, or wander too far, the time anomaly will be gone, and we'll have to travel home via a journey that'll make Homer's Odyssey positively child-friendly and picnic-like."
"...You know, because you've been there," Claudia said after a brief silence.
"Yes," Helen nodded solemnly. "Connor's actually helping me make a picture-book about my travels. I'll probably have it published as children's fiction of some sort, and... we'll see what'll happen next. Want to see it?"
The ploy was hollow, to say the least, but among other things it provided an excuse to leave. "Sure," captain Ryan nodded, "but one day we will be back."
And then they were gone.
/
Back inside the Home Office (the time anomaly vanished as soon as they returned to their time and place, they were met by a frantic Lorraine.
"You're back! Hallelujah!" she said in a clear relief. "What had happened to you there? You've been absent for the better part of a day!"
"What?" Connor's eyes budged. "But we've been there what? Five, seven minutes tops!"
"Time runs differently on two sides of a time anomaly, that's why it's an anomaly, aside from other reasons," Helen explained helpfully. "Hallelujah indeed that all that it cost us this time was just some time, and not even a full twenty-four hours worth." She paused and turned to Lorraine. "What has happened while we were gone?"
"Not much," Lorraine said, quietly. "Connor, one of your friends – the one who was bitten by a dodo – was sick, so he's in the hospital right now."
"What?" Connor yelled, before turning to the others. "Ah, Ms. Brown, I haven't got my driver's license yet-"
"Yes, Connor, I'll take you," Claudia said with a small, sad smile. "Let's go." And they were gone.
"Those two friends of Connor – I don't think he'll be friends with them for too long," Lorraine said sadly. "In fact, I'm not sure that the two of them will remain friends for too long now. People, some people just drift apart, you know?"
"I know," Helen nodded, rather hollowly, caught within her own thoughts. "Poor Connor. Think we should go there and back him up, when it goes wrong?"
There was a quick, almost frantic show of agreement, and everybody left, left to support Connor, just in case something did go wrong.
And it had.
But that is another story.
End