SOCK DUTY - PART II

After our eventful little break, we process the varying items Meganie has had me retrieving.

Seems her methodology is to do things in bulk.

All the prep, all the extractions, then all the admin.

Not my style, but whatever works best for someone to meet their efficiency and productivity potentials. I guess I prefer one project at a time, even with competing deadlines, but I see how her way of doing things makes sense in a lab. No point in repeatedly firing up specific machines for one specimen at a time.

“First, one calico print night sock.” I look at it forlornly lying in a sample dish.

Decontamination can be a faff when sending things back to other times and places, but thankfully this is from a similar world and period of history to where it ended up. A quick wash to get the engine oil off, then – while drying – work out the exact moment to send it home to.

“I-it looks like nothing will happen if it is not returned to its original dimension.” Meganie, a little too matter of factly, seems to be leaning towards archiving the sock as evidence, and calling the case closed.

I think she might have a tendency towards this kind of cataloguing, rather than thinking about the humanitarian element, what with the data slate and making observations of everything. Just can’t take the scientist out of her.

“Or…” even before I can get my suggestion out, she’s already measuring up a ziplock bag. I give her a glare with my hands on my hips, “…we can run it through that tachyon sensor array, work out when’s best to send it back to, and I can leave it poking out from under the washing machine.” 

I phrase it more as a statement, that we will be doing it, not a request. Any questions might result in a logic battle my supervisor’s giga-brain would inevitably win. However, I think Meganie might be a little more compliant if I’m firmer with her. Something about her just reminds me of working in a kindergarten as a classroom assistant. 

She’s like those little kids who’re really into one topic, but instead of planes or dinosaurs or whatever, it’s theoretical physics and advanced mathematics. I think I can get her on side if I suggest playing with one of the big fancy machines that’ll require a bunch of calibrating to set up and quadratics to work out any results from. The more sciencing the better.

It’s not like she’s work shy, what with her jumping to the archives as a first resort. That takes so much time to process. It’s more as if she needs permission from someone else to play with her favourite toys. What with how she acted around the coffee machine. 

Meganie considers my proposition and… 

3, 2, 1… Bingo!

…she’s 100% behind the idea, because, “It wouldn’t be right to leave some little girl without her bedtime sock, would it?” I twist the knife and she falls beneath my blade.

Drool dribbling to her chin before I can make it half way through the sentence. Only dabbing at the stream once it threatens to drip onto her tablet. 

Cute.

I realise I have a smile of my own.

Cute? Huh… I haven’t thought that in a while, and because of drool?

Meganie starts busying herself around the office, pulling up a door to the spectrometry lab while getting her leak under control, occasionally shaking and mumbling merrily to herself. 

Guess her enthusiasm is just infectious, or...

I leave my studious supervisor to her distractions.

...maybe the caffeine is kicking in a bit too much.

* * *

It’s weird how time works here… Basically, it’s all relative to the individual.

After I stick my head into the laboratory behind her, Meganie assures me that she will be done by the time I am back from Human Resources. It should only take me an hour to get an update and come back, but it might take her a couple of days to work out the perfect insertion point for that sock. However, closing the door lets time flow at its respective rates for each of us, stopping any leaks. Then re-entering the room synchronises us again. Convenient, but trippy. Hard to get your head around without a few PhD’s.

Which means they chose to make me wait around for days before letting me start?!.

“Hey, Chris.” I’m still a little tired honestly, and pissed now that I’ve realised he wasted my time, “how goes your research on ‘you know what’?” 

I wait by a chair until he lazily acknowledges I’m in the room. Lotus plant bobbing gently on his desk from a recent watering. Sparkling with dew.

He leans back from his beige monstrosity of a screen, one last click of its matching mouse, then lolls in his chair. A divine sloth in its natural habitat, “I, err… well, I’ve not made much headway,” no hint of apology to his voice.

I wasn’t expecting instant results, but a non-progress update after – I don’t even know how long I’ve been here, what with the expansion and dilation of time, maybe somewhere between a week and a month – seems a bit unreasonable.

“It’s hard enough finding a timeline where you can safely extract someone without it causing a problem…” His implication being that finding one to send such a person back to is even harder. 

I’ve accepted that I won’t be returning to my dimension, but I’m just not built for travelling between worlds to avert their destruction. Even if all Sock Duty does is glorified litter picking. “Well, keep looking, otherwise I speak to QA, remember.” 

The Head of HR stiffens, causing him to lose balance on the back legs of his chair. Exactly as you’re always warned about in school. He busies himself for a moment to show he’ll not let me down, our shared secret more a bludgeon than a bond. 

After a couple more minutes, he breaks the silence. “You didn’t come for an update did you?” 

Did I not? I thought I was just killing time until Meganie is done having fun… Meganie?

My thoughts congeal and words tumble from me before I can stop them. “Why doesn’t she go in the field?” 

Crap.

I don’t want to drop her in it. I don’t know how training or shadowing around here works, but to learn how to conduct myself on mission, I need to actually see a Returner in action on a mission. Not just a voice in my head when I’m not in the lab.

The atmosphere in the room gets tense for a moment and I look at Chris around his giant CRT monitor. His face a picture of confusion. 

Does he expect me to already know the answer?

“Well… that’s kind of a data protection issue. I can’t really discuss other employees with you like that, y’know?” Of course it’s a privacy thing. Even in an extra-dimensional organisation there is no limit to the bureaucracy. “One thing I can say is, err… the deeds of heroes are the stuff of legend. Chronicled in epics and contested over in history books… so, like, Meganie is no different.” 

* * * 

I spend, to me at least, an afternoon researching Meganie’s past in the Agency library. By name, she doesn't even register. By monicker – some gruesome code similar to the jumble of symbols that made up my dimension’s designation – she crops up in around 100,000 secondary sources. A lot of which are scientific journals, reports, patents, receipts, and other technical or clerical documents.

God she was prolific!

The number of them penned by her as a researcher are insane. However, the one or two pop culture references – from what would be an alternative future for my world, once humanity has conquered the entire solar system as a technocracy – are miserable.

While rubbing my brows at the knot of tiredness and eye strain within them, I put the collection of texts and corrupted image files back into their myriad places. 

No wonder she’s such a house mouse now... she was a literal lab rat!

Back in Sock Duty, my supervisor is just finishing up the statistical analysis, a grin on her face that looks like it’s been there the entire time. Her hair only slightly unkempt; lab coat only slight stained.

Then I see them.

Rows upon rows.

Piles upon piles.

Coffee cups of all size and shape litter every surface.

Their contents’ a spectrum of shades from blackest black to whole milk white.

Of course she’s not done yet, she’s been making all of these… she must be swimming in the stuff. I bet she reeks!

I make busy brewing a fresh pot for myself – if I’m going to be staying up a bit longer, I really need the caffeine – and try not to be too noisy, so the newly minted junky isn’t distracted while leaping the final hurdle.

“FINISHED!” 

Instead, I am the one who is startled, nearly spilling scalding coffee all over myself. While Meganie flings her hands in the air, high above her head, stretching to the rafters.

I can see her waver and deflate, sleep trying to take her at the moment of success, so I slip the only slightly sloshed cup under her nose. The reviving effects are like a smelling salt, she takes it into her hands, adds single cream and brown sugar, then folds her knees up onto the stool. 

A contented bird upon its perch. 

“You relax, I’ll punch up a portal and drop off the lost little kitten before it’s missed too much.” she nods and warms her hands on the mug while I sort the basic returns process.

Her analysis points to a lone apartment, some time in the recent past from my perspective.

Knew I was right!

I adjust the warp gate to about the size of a ceiling vent for me, which should work out as a little drainage grate below the washing machine on the other end. A floor-plan of the apartment glows next to me for reference, the holo-screen giving it the appearance of blueprints with a reticle for where the hatch will open. 

Shouldn’t be visible, but I’ll stick a fiber-optic through, just in case.

With everything lined up, and Meganie on the verge of roosting for the night, I swipe on the screen to initiate the doorway. 

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ~ 

At first there is a violent buzzing while the event horizon forms. 

KRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAK! 

Crackling like several gas stove ignitions firing at once. 

MMMMMMMMMMMM~ 

Then the low electrical hum of any old TV. 

I unscrew the grating that appears before me and slip it out of the frame, placing it on a little wheeled work table beside me. Other than the surgeon’s trolley, stainless steel and sterile, it kinda reminds me of when I worked for an air-con cleaning service.

As my arms ache at the muscle memory of toiling away with them above my head all day, I feed the flexi-cam through the to other side to make sure no one can see- 

I yank the cable back through, affix the vent cover in record time, and close the portal without returning the sock.

Meganie comes round at the flurry of motion – yawning as if she had, in fact, dozed off – and faces me. Eyes still closed behind steamed up glasses. “All done?” Another bout of yawns. Her nose crinkling as if she could sneeze at the intense barrage involuntary movements. 

To save her from the true horrors I bore witness to, I quickly spin a more pleasant story. “Oh, er… there was an elementary-schooler and her Mom in the kitchen. She was overjoyed at receiving a new pair of the socks and was in the process of making the spare into a calico print sweater vest for one of her dolls. Might have been a bit bittersweet returning it after all.” Barely holding a quavering smile as I anxiously put all our equipment away, and quickly throw the bed sock into an evidence bag so I no longer have to touch it. 

My supervisor shows the beginnings of a smile, then yawns deeply, almost dislocating her jaw like a snake, “That’s nice...” She unsteadily gets to her feet, dawdles to the bunk room like a zombie, and begins to disappear while I’m pottering about. “...thank you, Ken” with barely the energy to turn her head and lift her hand in a little wave, Meganie stumbles through the automatic doors. 

“Goodnight, Bon-“ I catch myself before my thoughts trip me up, “-ne nuit!” 

Too sleepy to notice my slip, the door slides closed behind her without a word – a little French goes a long way – as I’m sure the nano machines did their job translating. 

Bonny. Huh…

I wonder both how she’s doing, other than better without me, and why she came to mind all of a sudden... before being traumatized all over again at the sight of a middle aged man in stained briefs, one fluffy polyester cat print night sock, and enough body hair to have been mistaken for a feline himself.

My mind reels, my inner voice screaming to blank out the debauchery he was up to in that kitchen, and a little grateful the transceiver bots don’t transmit video.