I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group present UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT PROJECT PHOENIX "Lost Property" Part 1 of a 3-part mini-series scripted by Benjamin D. Hutchins pencils & inks by your visual cortex letters by Benjamin D. Hutchins editors: The Usual Suspects Bacon Comics chief: Derek Bacon (c) 2006 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited MONDAY, AUGUST 31, 2409 NEKOMIKOKA, TOMODACHI First-time visitors to the borough of Beiwiru, on the northwestern side of Tomodachi's capital city Nekomikoka, usually remark on the odd name. It doesn't strike people as a place name which makes sense in Standard or in Japanese, the two languages of choice on Tomodachi. For that matter, Beiwiru seems an odd kind of borough; though within the Nekomikoka city limits (as revised in 2275), it still gives the impression of being a separate town. That, of course, is largely because it was a separate town. In fact, when originally founded, Beiwiru was a considerable distance beyond the boundaries of Nekomikoka, not even a suburb but far enough out to be considered an "outlying community". With the explosive growth of the colony and its capital in the 2200s, though, the town of Beiwiru found itself consumed. Today it's a mostly-residential neighborhood with a few of the usual sorts of companies one finds on Tomodachi: software development houses and animation studios. It also has one of the best public high schools on the planet, the imaginatively named Beiwiru District High School. Public education is a vital, thriving sector on Tomodachi, which has one of the best-educated general publics in the Inner Sectors, and Beiwiru District is the centerpiece. Many members of its faculty are qualified to teach at the college level, but most of them think teaching high school is just more fun. One of those, the newest member of Beiwiru District High's faculty, had just completed his first day on the job, and he certainly thought so. In a single day on the job, he'd had more fun than he figured he'd had in the previous year. He hadn't really gotten to -teach- anything, not on Day 1, but just meeting the kids and setting the tone for his classes had been a great time. And people said Don Griffin didn't like kids. He stopped his car in a wooded clearing a mile or so outside Nekomikoka, in front of a log house (it was too nice to be labeled a cabin, Don thought). Climbing out of the antique Cord, Don went up and knocked at the door. There was no answer, so Don stood and listened for a moment, then smiled as he heard the sound of wood being chopped around back. He rounded the house and found its owner, the man called Logan (no first name and no particular desire for one), splitting firewood. "Hey, Logan," he said. The short, burly man split the log he'd just picked up, then stuck his axe in the chopping block, wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his flannel shirt, and grinned. "Your timing's good, Griffin," he said. "Just about time for a break. Beer?" "Don't mind if I do," Don replied. Privately, he didn't think much of the Canadian's taste in beer, but hospitality was hospitality. Logan led the way through his house (spartan, tidy, homey), collecting a couple of longnecks from the fridge on the way, and the two settled in rocking chairs on the front porch, where Logan nonchalantly opened both bottles with one of his retractable claws before handing Don's over. Don, who was much too accustomed to this sort of thing to blink, took a swallow, suppressed a grimace (couldn't Logan at -least- pop for Kirin Ichiban? It wasn't like he was hard up for money), and sighed companionably. "So how's work?" Logan asked. Don chuckled. "Terrific," he said. "I'm having a blast. And I've got a great bunch of kids, right through, from my freshman physical sci class period 1 through afternoon senior physics. And you'll never guess who I've got in that senior class." Logan cocked an eyebrow at the assumption that he'd have any idea who -anyone- in the senior class at Beiwiru District High School was. Playing along, he asked, "Who?" before taking a deep pull on his beer. "Scott Summers," said Griffin. Logan coughed convulsively, spraying beer halfway to Don's parked car. Spluttering, he wiped his face on his sleeve and then turned a scowl to Griffin. "That wasn't very flamin' neighborly," he grumbled. "It's true!" Don protested. "OK, I could've timed it better - " (privately, Don didn't think he could have) " - but it's the truth. Scott Summers is a student in my senior honors physics class." Logan eyed Don dubiously. "Quite a coincidence," he observed, "especially on a planet where 90% of the population has a Japanese name." "It's -not- a coincidence," Don said. "He's the real thing. He's from Halloran V, the ice planet. His friends call him 'Slim'. And - " Don grinned, leaning forward in his chair as he prepared to unload the clincher, " - he wears red sunglasses. All the time." The hairy Canadian raised an eyebrow again. "No kiddin'," he said. Don nodded. "He must be the local dimensional counterpart," he said. "And you know what the hell of it is? He's a great kid. He really is. He's 17, not really sure what he wants to do with himself yet, but a good student, one of the leaders of his class. And he has a sense of humor, too. The kid's just... -cool-." "So he's... what? What our Scott would've been if he'd had a happy childhood?" "Something like that. There's variance in every dimension - hell, you know that from personal experience," Don said. Logan nodded, then sat back and thoughtfully swigged some more beer. "Well, ain't that a kick in the ass," he said. Don nodded. "Yep." Kitty Griffin got home at about four that afternoon, mildly frazzled. The first day in a new school was always a hectic sort of time. Kitty was a doctoral candidate in the computer science department at the Nekomi Institute of Technology, and had spent the day getting shuffled from office to office, meeting the professors (the ones she hadn't met during her interviews last summer, anyway), and generally determining that if she wasn't careful, her work on her doctorate would consume her life in a way that even the grim death march of her master's degree hadn't managed. She didn't intend to let that happen. Part of the theory behind moving to Tomodachi from New Avalon, and to NIT from the New Avalon Institute of Science, was that she was going to take things a little easier in the pursuit of her doctorate, reserve more time and energy for her private life. If that meant it took her longer to get the degree, so be it. She'd already taken a year off after completing her master's in order to recharge and get her personal life in order. If it means she had to draw the occasional line in the sand, well, she was all right with that too. She and Don had found a new home, one which was peculiarly appropriate given what was going on in their lives. It was a two-story brick building at the corner of a couple of Beiwiru's side streets, a couple of blocks from the high school and about a mile from the edge of the NIT campus. The building, a decommissioned elementary school, looked curiously unresidential - few houses in Nekomikoka were built of red brick in the Federal style - and it had a yard out of all proportion to its size, compared to the others on that street. This roomy, friendly place, set back from the road in a quiet neighborhood, was the kind of home both Griffins figured they deserved, given that when they weren't studying or teaching, they had a tendency to get involved in complex and dangerous affairs of interstellar intrigue on behalf of the International Police. They and their friends had already half-jokingly dubbed it the Fortress of Solitude, and Kitty, for one, found it much more restful than the apartment she and Don had shared in New Avalon during her master's studies. The work she'd be doing looked to be exciting, though, and the facilities at NIT were spectacular. She was looking forward to telling her husband all about it, and learning about his day, too. Kitty was still mildly surprised that Don had taken a job teaching high school, of all things - both she and Hank McCoy, an old friend and fellow dimensional displacee who was a professor in the NIT physics department, had expected him to join either that faculty or the one at nearby Hotohori University. She found him in the kitchen, where, judging by the smell... "Oooohhh, you just put in a lasagna, didn't you," she said, coming up behind him and encircling him with her arms. "I did indeed," he replied, remaining at work over a large metal mixing bowl. "And after that I'm baking you cookies." "You are too, too good to me," she said, bending to kiss his cheek. Then, releasing him, she went to the refrigerator for a glass of milk. "So how was your day?" "Great," he said enthusiastically, pausing to dump a package of chocolate chips into the bowl. "I think this high school gig is going to agree with me. How was grad school?" "I think it'll work out," Kitty replied with a smile as she sat down at the table. Don finished mixing the cookie dough, draped a cloth over the bowl, and then went to the table himself. "What've they got you doing?" he asked. "Well, nothing yet," she said. "Once I get settled, I'll be helping with the computer piece of a big project the hyperphysics lab is doing. Very hush-hush - research project for the International Police, through Skuld's office." (Professor Skuld Ravenhair, the chair of the NIT physics department, was also Chief Technologist to the IPO. She was -also- the Norse goddess of technology and the future, but most people didn't know that part.) "Humph," said Don. "She hasn't said a thing to me about it. You'd think she could at least mention a thing like that to her Special Assistant." Kitty grinned. "Maybe it's because you're not a Lensman," she said with a laugh. "So tell me more about your day. How's the school? How are the kids?" "The school's great," Don said. "Bit bigger than I'm used to, but then," he added with a sly grin, "I went to private school. The facilities are first-rate, though. I've seen colleges that didn't have stuff that good. And the kids are outstanding. I've got four classes, all honors stuff - freshman physical science, two units of computer science, and senior physics - and there isn't a bad kid in the bunch." He grinned more broadly and added, "You're in my freshman group." Kitty stared at him. "What?" "Well, she's not -exactly- like you," Don corrected himself thoughtfully. "She wears her hair differently, and her eyes are grey. She's about an 80% match, though, for you at that age." Kitty arched an eyebrow. "You've got my local DC in your freshman physical science class?" Don nodded. "You want to talk about surprised. I'm calling the roll for the class, and when I get to her name I'm thinking, 'Now that's a hell of a coincidence.' So I say, 'Katherine Pryde?' and this little slip of a thing in the back of the room bounces up and says, 'That's me! Call me Kitty.'" "Are you putting me on?" "Nope. Swear by Omega's Hand. She's in my fourth-period comp sci class too. Nice, nice kid. And smart! Scary-smart." He grinned again. "That matches too." Kitty laughed, then asked, "Was I a 'little slip of a thing' when I was 14?" Don gave her a wry look. "Hon, you're a little slip of a thing now," he said, indicating the difference between her slender dancer's frame and his own, which was built more for hauling freight. "At 14, you were... " He trailed off, then laughed, shaking his head. "I was about to say 'practically insubstantial'." Kitty laughed again, harder this time. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2409 Three weeks into the school year, Don was about getting the hang of teaching high school. His initial assessment of his classes had been a trifle over-generous - his first impressions often were - but even the kids he found himself having a little trouble with weren't really -bad- kids, they were just ill-focused. He thought he would probably be able to get through to most of them, and one had already transferred to a different division anyway, daunted by the aggressive syllabus for what was commonly supposed to be an easy-A general computer science class. He was in his small office, which was really a supply cabinet off his classroom-cum-laboratory, at lunchtime on a rather chilly Thursday when there was a knock at the door, and he looked up to see an old friend standing in the doorway. "Kurt!" he said, standing and coming around his desk. "How are you?" "Oh, I get by," Kurt Wagner replied with a grin, shaking Don's outstretched hand. "I don't want to alarm you," he added in his faint German accent, "but your classroom is full of unsupervised students." Don chuckled. "They're not unsupervised," he said, "I've appointed a student leader. Anyway, they're just messing around with some simple dye chemistry today. It's my lunchtime exploration group," he explained to Wagner's puzzled look as he led the way back out of his office. "Some of the kids in my classes come in and spend lunch on Tuesday and Thursday doing lab stuff. Just for fun, really. They're not getting credit for it or anything." "High school students doing something they don't have to do?" Wagner mused as he and Don stood just inside the classroom and watched the students at work. "Hard to believe." Don grinned. "These are some great kids." His grin took on a slightly devilish quality most people would sooner have expected on Wagner's yellow-eyed, dark-blue, fanged countenance as he added, "In fact, there's one I'd like you to meet." Raising his voice, he called into the room, "Kyra! Kyra, would you come here for a second?" from behind a group of lab-coated students at the far side, a high, clear voice with a hint of an accent much like Wagner's own replied, "Be right there, Professor!" Then, with a rather loud BAMF noise and a whiff of something like sulphur, a third person had joined the teacher and his guest by the office door. "Ja, Professor?" asked the new arrival - and then she caught sight of Kurt Wagner and looked mightily surprised. "Hey!" she blurted, pointing. "You look like me!" If she was mightily surprised, it was nothing compared to the look of complete astonishment on Kurt Wagner's face. The girl standing in front of him -did- look like him - and that was very startling and unexpected, since Wagner had always considered his appearance to border on unique. She had dark blue skin covered in very short, velvety indigo fur; yellow eyes so reflective they almost seemed to glow; only two fingers and a thumb on each hand; pointed ears like a Vulcan's; and a devil-pointed tail about half her height in length. Her face resembled his, too. Its lines were a bit softer and a bit rounder than his thin, pointy look, but he could have been her college-age brother. Finding his voice, he said, "Er, well, technically, Fraulein, I think you look like me." Griffin grinned - clearly, he was enjoying this far too much - and said, "This is Kyra Wagner, one of my fourth-period CS students. Kyra, this is Kurt Wagner. We went to high school together." "Uh... hi," said Kyra, clearly baffled. "Wow. Wagner, huh? Do you think we might be related?" "Well... not directly, perhaps," said Kurt; then he grinned, fast recovering his aplomb, and added, "but the resemblance is truly striking." "Remember I told Kitty's class on Monday that I'm from a parallel dimension?" said Don. "Well, Kurt here is from the same dimension. He's my home universe's version of you. Or rather, you're this universe's version of him. It's all in your perspective." Kyra's yellow eyes went wide with fascination. "Wow," she said. "That's amazing." "Kyra!" a voice called from the group she had left. "We need your hands over here." "Just a second!" she called back over her shoulder; then she turned back to Griffin and Wagner and said, "Uh, I should get back... " Griffin smiled. "Go ahead. Sorry about the shock - I wanted to spring you on Kurt cold and see his reaction." Kyra laughed. "Glad to help. You should do a class unit on this parallel-dimension thing," she suggested. "I'd be glad to help demonstrate." "That's not a bad idea," said Griffin, nodding. "Go on, now, your teammates need you." "OK. See you later, Mr. Wagner. It was nice to meet me," she said with a smile, and then teleported back to the other side of the room. Kurt Wagner folded his arms, leaned back against the frame of Griffin's office door, and watched his counterpart work for a few minutes, laughing and joking with her classmates as she used both hands and her tail to steady a combination of flasks and beakers. "Look at her," he mused quietly. "She doesn't have to hide behind a holographic screen. Doesn't have to pretend she's like the others. She's... she's so -happy-." Griffin nodded soberly. "There are others here," he said. "Local counterparts. People who remind me of us at this age. You heard me mention Kitty?" Wagner nodded. "Ja, I was wondering about that." He smiled. "How like our Kitty is she?" "I'd say see for yourself, but she's not here today," Don replied. "Math team practice, I think." "Ahh," said Wagner, nodding with a knowing smile. He looked like he was getting ready to say something else, but he held off when the classroom door opened and a tall, slim young man with neatly cut brown hair, a Beiwiru High athletic sweater, and red wraparound sunglasses entered. The students working at the front table, nearest the door, greeted him cheerfully. Kyra took a moment from working on the experiment to go and embrace him, if only quickly to avoid running afoul of the school's ban on public displays of affection. Kurt's face went blank again. He turned to Griffin with a look combining dismay with surprise. "Mein Gott," he muttered. "Is that - " Griffin nodded. "It sure is." "And she's... " Griffin nodded. "They've been going together for a couple of months." He shrugged. "I don't think it's real serious, but they're good together." Wagner wiped a hand down his face. "I have trouble thinking of anything Scott is involved with as not 'real serious'." Don chuckled. "Different Scott, different rules," he said. "He's a great kid. Logan and I were talking about him after my first day at this job. We figure he's basically what our Scott would be if he'd had a decent childhood." He shrugged. "Then again, maybe not. Kyra's was no happier than yours, and you both turned out OK. Chalk it up to dimensional variance." Wagner shook his head. "I've been here for how long now? And I'm still getting used to this whole concept. Some days I feel like I'll never catch up." Griffin laughed and clapped his friend on the shoulder. "Join the club, Kurt," he said. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2409 Kyra Wagner examined the item sitting on the table at the front of Prof. Griffin's classroom with an air of puzzled interest. Then, as the teacher entered the room, she turned. "Professor?" she asked, pointing. "What's this orange doing here?" Don laughed and gave her his "you're going to love this" grin, already a favorite among his students. Then he looked around his classroom with moderate surprise. "This is it?" he asked, spreading his hands. Scott Summers shrugged. "I guess so," he said with a slightly sheepish grin. "Everybody else is at the big football rally," Kitty Pryde said with a trace of half-joking disdain. She didn't mind football, but it was certainly a poor second to one of Prof. Griffin's special labs, and anyway, the game wasn't even until Friday. "Hmph," said Griffin. "Ah, well. Then everybody else is going to miss the fun. I've got something special lined up today." He gestured to the big slate-topped lab table at the back of the room. Scott, Kitty, and Kyra looked... and then turned to their teacher in bafflement. The table appeared to be covered in junk electronics, a haphazard-looking pile of random parts connected by a couple of fat cables to Don's school-issue desktop PC, which stood at the end of the table with one of its side panels removed. "Um... " said Kitty as she examined the largest piece of junk on the table. "We're going to learn to fix old laser holography systems?" "No, no!" said Griffin, beaming. "This is much more interesting than that. You're looking at the beginning of modern matter transmission technology." Scott tilted his head slightly. "You built a transporter out of an old holotank laser?" "Of a sort. Have a seat and I'll give you the background info." The three students sat, and Don went to the front of the room, next to the table with the orange on it, to speak. "OK. You all know basically how a transporter works. Alignment field, subetheric molecule mapping, matter-to-energy conversion, Heisenberg compensation, yadda yadda yadda." Kitty giggled. "Is that the technical term, Mr. G?" she asked. "Yes it is," Don replied firmly. "And you have to wave your hands just like I did - " (he did it again) " - because it's originally a Twi'lek term." "Do they use their hands, though," asked Kyra, "or those things on their heads?" "Let's save that for when we get into xenoanatomy next semester," said Don, grinning. "Anyway. You know basically how a transporter works, and you know that they were developed at Zeta Cygni back in the 2380s. What you probably -don't- know is that the first working matter-to-energy-to-matter transmission system that we know of was developed on Earth - in the late twentieth century, before First Contact with Salusia." "What?" said Scott. "No way," said Kyra. "Why haven't we ever heard about it?" Kitty asked. Don's grin widened. "Perfect question," he said. "Because the technology's creators decided that it was too dangerous for society as they knew it at the time. After a few initial tests and one pretty wild mishap, they buried the research. "Now, by our standards, it was pretty primitive," Don said, and he led them to the back of the room to point out parts of the apparatus set up on the back table as he talked. "Still, it had everything it needed to be an effective precursor to a modern transporter. Sub-etheric technology hadn't been developed yet on Earth, so it used a scanning laser to map and then dematerialize the molecular structure of the matter to be transported. A slow and clunky way to do it, but it worked. It used a computer - a very powerful one for its day - in place of what we would think of as a pattern buffer. Error correction was all done in software." "What year was it?" asked Kitty. "1982," Don replied. "Hard to believe something like that would work, let alone built with 1980s Earth technology," Scott mused. "Well, my reproduction is made of slightly more modern parts, but the software it's running is authentic. It's the last rev they made on the software before the project got killed the following year," Don said. "Prepare to be amazed!" He ushered the students into a group behind him, safely behind the table out of the laser's field of fire, before turning to the console of the computer patched into the projector assembly and powering it all up. The laser hummed to life, status lights pulsing. The three students watched in silence as he turned to the computer console, bringing up an emulator window and then opening an ancient text-interface program within it. GIBBS-BAINES MATTER DIGITIZATION SYSTEM (c) 1983 ENCOM PRIMARY DIGITIZATION SEQUENCE: COMMENCING TARGET ACQUISITION......ACQUIRED They stopped looking at the screen after that, because when the laser fired, it grabbed all their attention and held it. The blue beam shot across the room, bracketed the orange in a three-dimensional grid of little cubes, and then split and started tracking, disintegrating the orange along the grid lines as it went. It took about ten seconds for the beam to completely wipe away the fruit, leaving the table empty. Playing slightly to his rapt audience, Don showed them the directory where the orange was now a file on his desktop computer's storage crystal, then keyed another sequence into the digitization program and set the orange for retrieval. The process happened in reverse, the laser drawing the gridded box where the orange had been and then slowly filling the orange back in. When it shut down again, the fruit was back in its place, looking as if nothing had happened. Don closed the emulation window, dumping the digitizing program from the system's active memory, then powered the laser down. Then he led the way back to the front of the classroom, where his students examined the orange. They'd all seen transporters in use - Scott had even used one once - and of course Kyra could mimic their effect, to a certain extent, with nothing but her own personal resources; but still, seeing that done and knowing it had been accomplished on Earth almost twenty years before that world joined the galactic community impressed the hell out of them. "It -looks- the same as before," Kitty mused, "but what about inside?" Don smiled, picked up the orange, peeled it, and handed sections around. "See for yourself," he said. With experiments like that going on, it didn't take Don long to become one of the school's most popular teachers, at least with a particular stripe of the student population. The culture at Beiwiru, unlike that at a lot of public schools, enabled the student-teacher relationship to expand beyond the classroom. Students and their teachers were encouraged to pursue common interests, if they found they had any. The idea was that it would broaden the opportunities for both groups to teach and learn in informal settings or something. Don was sure there was a lot of sound educational and socio-psychological theory behind it, but he didn't really care about that. Leave that kind of thing to the experts in that field, one of which he was assuredly not. What mattered to him was that, 90% of the time, he didn't have to feel prematurely elderly teaching these kids. He could hang out with them, invite them to his home, work on cars or blow up part of his basement or whatever with them, without worrying that some guidance counselor was going to call the cops. By the end of the school year's first half, he had a small cadre of students who tended to find their way to his place once or twice a week after school, and reasonably often on the weekends. Don and Kitty spent some time one weekend, after they'd gone, speculating as to whether the fact that they were all counterparts of people they'd known in their previous lives could be coincidence. There were Kitty and Kyra and Scott, of course; they were pretty much the core of the group. Kitty came as often to talk to Kitty, with whom she naturally shared a wide range of interests, as for anything Don was up to. Kyra was in it for the solidarity as much as the learning - she was an orphan, a ward of the Catholic Church, and Don and Kitty suspected she was lonely at the convent where she lived when not at school. There wasn't anyone else even close to her age living there, and though the nuns treated her well, they were strict and old-fashioned. As for Scott, he was just naturally outgoing, and he and "the Professor" had a lot of common interests beyond their official academic involvements. They spent companionable hours after school and on weekends in the Griffins' garage, wrenching up old cars and motorcycles and generally having what Kitty wryly referred to as "guy time". (Not an entirely fair statement to make, since they were often joined by at least one non-guy, Scott's younger sister Alexandra; and wasn't -she- a surprise for Kitty and Don.) There were a few others who stopped by from time to time, but that was the core group, and the Griffins sometimes joked that it felt like they'd had kids and skipped the really hard part. How could life get any better? "Easy - easy! That's my HAND, I NEED that." "You've - ugh! - got another... hang on, what's it caught on? Oh - look out - corner of the - " "Careful - careful now - almost there - OK, let it down EASY... Phew!" Don straightened up, dusting off his hands, then stepped back and surveyed the large crate he and his helper had just finished depositing in a corner of his TARDIS control room. "There!" he said. "That wasn't so bad." Scott Summers gave him a skeptical look. "Would've been a lot easier if we could've just used a gravity lifter," he remarked. Don snorted. "That would've been fixed up," he said. Then, adopting a theatrically pompous manner, he gripped the lapels of his dark green trenchcoat and announced, "Good day, 1966 performance shop proprietor! I require your most powerful 426 Hemi engine. No, no, there's no need for a hand truck - my young assistant and I will use this blatantly anachronistic lifting device to remove it from your place of business! You see, we're hot rod enthusiasts from the FUTURE." Dropping the pose, he shook his head with a grin and said, "Taking that tack with people just never ends well on Earth before about 2150." Scott laughed. "Speaking of which, I'd better take his hand truck back to him before he wonders if we've run off with it. Wouldn't want him coming to investigate. We'd have a hard time explaining what we're doing inside a Pepsi machine in an alley." The young man was gone for several minutes, during which time Don busied himself at the console. He looked up and grinned as Scott returned. "Now where to?" Scott asked. "Home!" Don replied grandly. "We've got everything we need now to - " A high-pitched piping chime and a flashing light on one of the console's six faces interrupted him. He went around to investigate, then frowned. "Hrmph," he grumbled. "What the hell do -they- want?" "Who?" asked Scott. "The Time Lords," Don replied. "They've paged the TARDIS with a recall signal. They want me back on Gallifrey for some reason." He sighed and started setting controls. "I suppose I should go see what they want." "Can't you call them and ask?" Don tsked as he set the controls. "My dear fellow," he said, "there are some things in life that simply aren't done. One of them is calling up the Council and asking them what's so important that you have to drop what you're doing and come back to Gallifrey." "Oh. Well, I guess you'd better drop me at home, then." Don raised an eyebrow. "You don't want to see Gallifrey?" They emerged from the TARDIS and onto what appeared to be the quadrangle of a college, a grassy space surrounded by rather imposing buildings. Groups of young people in scarlet robes went this way and that, carrying on conversations among themselves as they moved on their mysterious errands. The color of the robes and the orange brocading on the fronts of them matched the alternate diagonal stripes on the tie Don had put on in transit. Don looked around for a moment and smiled nostalgically. "Ahhh," he said. "The Quad." Then he inflated his lungs and, to Scott's surprise, burst into song: "Prydonia, Prydonia The Orange and the Sca-ar-let If you don't think that we're the best Then you're some kind of varlet!" He struck out across the Quad (Scott, with his longer stride, easily keeping up), still belting out in his surprisingly decent baritone voice, "Prydonia Academy, the light of Gallifrey Now and forever, we shall never go astray Our founder was great Rassilon, first of the Lords of Time And we shall trounce Arcalia when the rugby weather's prime Prydonia, Prydonia The Orange and the Sca-ar-let Our maidens are the fairest ones And Patrex girls are harlots!" Scott struggled not to laugh as he followed Don toward the most imposing of the buildings, a rounded red-chrome monstrosity like a gigantic bullet festooned with five jagged faux-lightning spires - quite out of place in the quiet, staid, English-like academic atmosphere of the Quad and the rest of the buildings. He sized the Prydonian Chapter Hall up judiciously and pronounced its architectural style "Ming (the Merciless) Dynasty". Red-edged orange banners fluttered from the five spires. Don, meanwhile, had begun another verse of the fight song: "Our eyes are keen, our wits are sharp Our calculations quick Our hero's mighty OH-mega And his great Hand and - " "Don!" a delighted voice interrupted him. "Gordon BENNETT, what're YOU doing here?" Scott pulled himself away from ruminating on what God-awful trend in architecture had conspired to plunk the Ming Bullet in the middle of all this somber academia. He focused instead on the figure who had come up to Don and said that. She was a girl who looked a couple-three years older than Scott, fresh-faced and smiling, with long brown hair in a rather severe French braid. Not much could be told about her build, since she, like everyone else here, was wearing one of those scarlet robes, which were cut like academic gowns and sufficient to conceal a multitude of sins. Don paused to accept an enthusiastic embrace from this young lady, then stepped back and said, "Well, well, well! So he got you in here too, did he? What year?" "Second," she replied. "They putting you through it like they did me?" "Probably worse, the way we showed 'em up back in the day," the girl said with a wry grin. She had an English accent, not high-class like the one Emma Frost affected, but not gutter cockney either. "So who's your friend?" she added, looking past Don at Scott. Don smiled. "Scott, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine from the early days of my time-traveling career - this is Ace. Ace, meet Scott Summers." Ace blinked. "Seriously?" She sized Scott up with an appraising look. "I'd have figured he'd be older." "He's from the timeline where Kitty and I live now," Don explained. "Ahhh," said Ace. "Nice t'meet you," she added to Scott. "First time on Gallifrey?" Scott nodded. "I just happened to be along on a parts run when the call came in." Ace raised an eyebrow. "Parts run?" "We're building a car." "You've got to travel in time to get parts for a car?" "You have any idea how much a 426 Hemi motor costs in the 25th century?" Scott asked. Ace laughed. "S'pose you've got a point there," she said. "I hate to interrupt this FASCinating conversation," a dark, gravelly, faintly derisive voice interrupted, "but I believe the Lord President used his influence to inflict you on this institution so that you could study the nature of Time and Space, Dorothy McShane, NOT socialize with uninvited outworlders." Ace visibly bristled at the use of her full name, but she kept herself very well in hand, Don thought; he remembered a time when she'd have taken a softball bat to anybody who talked to her that way, whether he used her real name or not. Instead, she controlled herself with a visible effort, and then managed to -smile- slightly as she said, "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Won't happen again." "See that it doesn't," said the owner of the voice, a man in much more ornate but similarly-colored robes. "Now be off with you." Ace nodded - it was almost a bow - and said again, "Yes, sir." As she passed Scott, though, she leaned and murmured rapidly, "Meet me in the caf at lunchtime. Don knows where it is," before she hurried off to her class. The man in the ornate robes, a portly, fleshy-faced, heavy-jowled specimen with very little thinning grey hair, shook his head sadly. "The worst student in the history of the Prydonian Chapter Academy," he observed. "Rassilon turns in his Tower." Don folded his arms across his chest and said, in a flat tone barely short of hostility and completely lacking the bantering tone implied by the words, "Worse than I was?" "Immeasurably worse," replied the other without hesitation. "Oh, she has a certain talent for lateral thinking and a surprising grasp of hyperspatial concepts, especially for a savage; but she lacks even your rudimentary concept of discipline, Trokhai. She reminds me of Castellan Andred's consort," he added with a tone of vast disdain. Don smiled mildly. "She seems quite disciplined to me, Tobernel," he replied. "You called her Dorothy and you still have your head." "She's had to get used to that," Tobernel replied with a thin, cold smile. "Most of the other students and even some of the faculty call her by her insipid nickname, but not when I'm around to hear it. I won't have that kind of foolishness in my academy. And as even you should be able to tell from my robes, Trokhai, it's Lord Chancellor Tobernel now." "Then it's not your academy any more, is it?" said Don blandly. Tobernel fixed Don with an icy look from his watery blue-grey eyes and said in a low, dangerous tone, "It will -always- be my academy." Scott wasn't sure what the deal was here, but it was clear to him that these two guys loved each other about as much as Mrs. Griffin and Emma Frost did. Social custom kept them civil, but barely, as they fenced with words. Scott didn't like the guy much either, partly because he was automatically on Professor G's side of any disagreement, and partly because he thought Tobernel was just an asshole. "Walk with me, Trokhai," said Tobernel peremptorily. He turned and swept toward the Ming Bullet. Don raised a hand as if considering launching a rude gesture at his wide scarlet back, then sighed and followed, jerking his head to show that Scott should come with him. "When I summon you to Gallifrey in future," said Tobernel without looking back, "you will be so good as to arrive in the Arrival Hall rather than parking that relic in public. Should any student choose to examine it, that student's knowledge of TARDIS construction and repair will be set back by eons." "I materialize where I like," Don replied calmly. "What do you want, Tobernel?" At the edge of sharpness that crept into Don's voice as he asked the question, Tobernel paused. It seemed to occur to him that he'd alienated his visitor. He turned, his hands folded before him, and put a conciliatory look on his broad, Slavic-looking face. "Forgive me, Trokhai," he said. "Believe it or not, I am trying to put our past behind us, where it belongs. I asked you here to do you a favor." Don looked part-puzzled, part-disbelieving. "A favor," he said skeptically. Tobernel nodded. "Yes," he said. "Come to the tower with me and I'll explain." Seeming to notice Scott for the first time, he added, "Your... friend... can wait in the Lower Library. There will be something there he can read, I'm sure." The Lower Library turned out to be a huge, dark-paneled room full of leather books and leather chairs, the sort of place that a true bibliophile like Mrs. Griffin or Scott's own contemporary Kitty would go into ecstasies just stepping into. Scott, who liked to read but wasn't fanatical about it, was less impressed, but at least it looked like a comfortable place to wait. "Wish Kitty could see this place," he mused to Don, first pulling him out of earshot of Tobernel. "Look, watch yourself, will you? I don't trust this guy." "Neither do I," Don replied with a grim chuckle, "believe me. Stay out of trouble. I'll find out what he means by 'favor' and we'll get out of here." "OK," said Scott, nodding. "You have any trouble, you yell. I wish we could've rounded Logan or Mrs. G or somebody up before we came here... I have a bad feeling about this." He nodded slightly toward Tobernel, who waited in the doorway with a look of affected patience. "Of course, Saruman there doesn't help," he added wryly. "When he called me your friend, I could've sworn he'd just barely stopped himself from saying something else." He frowned darkly. "Like, say, 'pet'." Don nodded, his own expression just as dark. "That's probably because he did just that," he replied. "Stay frosty. If I'm not back by lunch, the caf is down the hall on the right - you won't miss it. Go meet Ace, it'll take your mind off things." "And if you get in trouble, I'll have some help rescuing you," Scott added seriously, nodding. "Gotcha." "Listen," said Don, very serious, gripping Scott's shoulder firmly. "Don't do anything that might get Ace in trouble. She's in the same situation I was in when I studied here, I've told you about it. They're just looking for an excuse to expel her. Don't let her give them one." "I'll do my best," Scott promised, but his own look was just as uncompromising as he added, "But if this guy pulls some kind of stunt first, then all bets are -off-." Don smiled, released his student's shoulder, then thumped it lightly. "OK. See you in a bit." Then he brushed past and went to join Tobernel. Scott watched him go, then sighed. Something about this whole setup made his hands itch. He reached to the inside pocket of his leather bomber jacket, took out his optic visor, and quickly swapped it for his red shades, tucking the latter away in his pocket. It made him look a little weird, but around -here-, it wasn't like anybody was going to notice, and he wanted to be ready for action instantly if the need arose. Then, his preparations as complete as he could make them, he went to one of the shelves, pulled out a book at random, and sat down to read it. "So," said Don casually as he followed Tobernel through the corridors of the Prydonian Chapter Hall. "What's this favor?" "Ah-ha-ha, wait and see, Trokhai, wait and see," said Tobernel, his fleshy face looking outright -pleased-. Don fell silent, though his mind was racing. What the hell was the old bastard up to? He wasn't about to do a favor for a man he'd hated for their entire association. This had to be a setup for something, but what? Tobernel was too smart to try to kill him again; he'd almost gotten caught the last time, and now that he was Lord Chancellor, the number-two man in the whole Time Lord hierarchy, that paradoxically made Don -safer-. Tobernel was under too much scrutiny to make a move like that... ... so what -was- he up to? He -laughed-, Don thought. I -definitely- do not like this now. The chancellor led the way through the research area, practically -bustling-, which was almost obscene in a man of his girth and solemnity, and to a hallway which led out of the Chapter Hall and into the Citadel, the central structure of Time Lord government. That the Citadel was many hundreds of miles away from the Prydonian Chapter Academy was of little importance on Gallifrey. Their roamings brought them presently to a hallway which led to an area Don was intimately, even painfully, familiar with: the detention area. Don resisted the urge to trigger his recall matrix and summon his powered armor suit on the spot. There might yet be some innocent explanation. Surely Tobernel wasn't mad enough to try throwing him in irons again now. Sensing the tension in the younger man, the chancellor chuckled. "Don't worry, dear boy," he said, trying his best to sound genial and only managing to seem more sinister than before. "You were pardoned by the High Council, if you recall, and freed from any further obligation. I have neither reason nor grounds to hold you for anything. This was merely the most expedient place to store the item we recovered until - well. I'm getting ahead of myself," he said with a complacent smile. "Item? What item?" "Patience!" Tobernel replied. They stopped in front of the door to the cell at the end of the detention hall - the specially reinforced one, rather like an inverse Zero Room, which the Celestial Intervention Agency had once built specifically to contain a cosmic avatar. "Here we are," said Tobernel in a satisfied tone. "Shortly, I'll be willing to answer all the questions you may have, but first the joyful moment, I think." Don fixed the chancellor with a hard look. "What the hell are you -talking- about, Tobernel?" he demanded. The old buzzard's games were wearing on his patience fast now. "I'm talking about lost property, dear boy," Tobernel replied, his self-satisfied smile now nearly ear-to-ear. He keyed the cell door with a flourish, and as it opened he made a presenting gesture and added through his huge, smug grin, "I believe this belongs to you." There was a person in the cell, and for a moment more, Don experienced nothing but a still higher pitch of confusion. Whoever it was, he was seated on the bunk-platform in the middle of the circular cell, his back to the door, wearing a hooded white robe so that nothing of him could be seen. Hearing the door open, he turned, looking back over his shoulder, and his hood fell back and away from his head. -Her- head. A head with bright red hair, cut short on top and tied into a long braid at the base of her neck. Her deep blue eyes met Don's pale blue ones with a look of mingled worry and curiosity. Recognition struck Don Griffin like a physical blow. He put a hand out to steady himself against the doorframe, then turned to the still-grinning face of Tobernel. "... this... this can't be - " "Real?" Tobernel interrupted, his smile broadening further still. "Oh, yes, Trokhai, I assure you, she's quite genuine. And I must say," he said in a tone of gentlemanly reproach, "you're being very rude to her. Go and say hello! "After all," the chancellor added, a nasty light coming into his eyes, "she is your wife." The Prydonian Chapter Academy's "caf" wasn't so much a cafeteria as a refectory, old-fashioned and ornate - like the Lower Library, completely at odds with the building's sci-fi baroque exterior. It had some of the bustle of a college cafeteria, but not enough to dispel the almost monastic effect its decor and vaulted ceiling imposed. Ace and Scott sat in one of the corners, far from the entrance and the most populous tables, and spent most of the lunch hour discussing the ups and downs of traveling with Time Lords before moving on to other subjects, such as the Prydonian fight song. "Don and some of his classmates wrote that," Ace explained. "Luckily old Tobernel never found out he was involved, or he'd have kicked him out for sure. It's still starting brawls at rugby games." "They play rugby on Gallifrey?" "Sure. Field hockey and tennis, too. 20th-century Earth things are very popular here, because of the Doctor's presidency. Another thing old Tobernel hates about him," Ace added with a giggle. "Anyway, the fight song is bloody infamous. It's forbidden, of course. Every now and then the instructors go through everyone's files looking for copies, but they can't stop oral tradition." "Is there more of it?" Scott asked. "Oh, loads!" Ace confirmed, nodding. "There are 17 verses just detailing the Arcalians' sex lives. We never get past the line about Patrex girls in actual practice, though. That's always where the fights start. It's a shame, really, given how much work Don had to put in to find all those rhymes for 'heliotrope'." Instead of entering as Tobernel suggested, Don keyed the door shut again and rounded on the chancellor, his face suffused with anger. "This isn't goddamned funny," he snarled. "This time you've gone too far." "It wasn't intended to be funny!" Tobernel protested, looking genuinely startled. Then his tone took on its same old undercurrent of oily insincerity as he recovered his composure and went on smoothly, "I thought you'd be pleased. After all, it's not every day that a revolutionary advance in block transfer mechanics results in the retrieval of a loved one from the Vortex. Oh, there was a slight loss of temporal fidelity - you may notice she seems younger than when you last saw her - but her subquantum identity is quite beyond question." Don shook his head. "That's impossible," he snapped. "Matter lost in the Vortex is gone forever, reduced to mathematical chaos beyond even block transfer's - " "Like you were?" Tobernel interjected smoothly. When that pulled Don up short, the chancellor smiled and capitalized on his opening: "Your paramour's powers may have been impressively flashy, Trokhai, but nothing is beyond the reach of Time Lord science." His face suddenly hardened into a flinty look, all the bonhomie erased, and he added coldly, "-Nothing-. You would do well to remember that." Then he smiled his false smile again and said, "Now be a nice fellow and go say hello. She must be terribly confused." Don stared hard at the chancellor, his lips pressed tight together. Then he slapped the activator for the door and went inside. Rachel was still sitting on the platform in the middle of the room; she'd turned around to face the door, and looked puzzled. Don felt a tingle of warning at the base of his skull as he approached her, but it took him a moment to realize why. She was looking at him with that same look of mildly concerned bafflement that she'd had when she first looked at him. No spark of recognition had crossed her face. He was a stranger to her, and she was wondering who he was and what he wanted. No, no, this can't be happening, something in his mind screamed; but he kept his face calm and his voice steady as he sat down carefully beside her and said softly, "Hello, Rachel." She blinked her clear blue eyes at him, tilted her head slightly, and said in an uncharacteristically soft voice, "Do I know you?" Don forced a weak smile onto his face. "Apparently not," he said. "No, I mean... should I?" she said. "I know I don't know you, I don't know anyone. I don't even know who -I- am." "Your... your name is Rachel," said Don hesitantly. "Rachel Summers." Tobernel was right, she -was- younger than she'd been when he'd last seen her. In fact she seemed little, if any, older than she'd been when they first met. Perhaps that was why he instinctively used the name she'd gone by then, the name she'd been given at birth. Rachel looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook her head. "Doesn't do a thing for me," she said with a wry little smile, as if her predicament faintly amused her. Then, sobering, she looked him in the eyes and said flatly, "But... there's something about you I trust. I don't know why - I don't know you - but I feel like I can trust you. And... I get the impression there isn't a whole lot of people I can say that about. So, I guess, Rachel it is." Don couldn't speak; he couldn't think of anything to say. Instead, he took hold of her hands; she placed them willingly in his, and he held them between him and her for a few minutes, looking at her through eyes rapidly misting with tears. "What's the matter?" she asked, sounding concerned. "I'm... it's a long story," he said, releasing her hands to dash at his tears with a sleeve. "Could you... just... wait here for a second?" "Sure." She cracked that wry smile again. "Not like I'm going anywhere. I don't even know where I am." Don glanced at her, his eyes cleared now but troubled, and then got up and left the room. In the hall, he thumbed the door shut without looking at the controller. Then, without a word, without a -sound-, he crumpled to his knees, arms crossing over his belly as though he'd been slugged, forehead pressed to the cool white floor. In the back of his mind, he recoiled, hating to show this pain in front of Tobernel, where the fat old slug could see it and gloat over it; but it was the only way he could think of to keep from screaming, which would have been worse. He wasn't sure how long he stayed there, his eyes squeezed shut, his mouth open in a silent scream, before Tobernel's oily, overly polite voice impinged on his reeling consciousness: "You needn't get so overwrought about it, Trokhai. I understand, though - you're in shock, you're speechless. Well, that's all right, my boy." A hand descended patronizingly on one hunched shoulder, and Tobernel's voice said silkily in his ear, "There's no need to thank me." Don could take no more. With a snarl that would have done Wolverine credit, he reared upright, the held-back tears spraying from his eyes as they snapped open under brows knotted with rage. Tobernel sprang back with surprising agility for his age and bulk, actual fear plain on his face, as the solidly built X-Man rounded on him and drove a fist toward his face. The blow made a solid WHANG as it landed home, and Tobernel's eyes slid sideways. Griffin had driven the punch into the wall next to the chancellor's head, and now he leaned into the older man's face, his own face still a mask of rage. "never. touch. me," he snarled. Then he withdrew his fist, whirled, and smacked the door control again. "Come on," he said to Rachel. "We're leaving." Ace's lunch hour was drawing to a close, and the apprentice Time Lord was regretfully thinking that it was almost time to wrap up her visit with her newly-made friend when Don suddenly appeared next to the table, his face like a thundercloud. "Scott," he said flatly. "Time to go." "OK, just a second," Scott said agreeably, but before he could elaborate on what needed a second to wrap up, Don snapped, "NOW." A microsecond flash of annoyance crossed Scott's face - Don was usually a lot more reasonable about things than this - but his natural unease with the situation wiped it away almost instantly. If Professor G was that wound up, something -bad- must have happened. He rose, turning, and then blinked behind his visor as he saw the young woman standing next to Don. He had never seen her before, but there was something ineffably -familiar- about her. In an instant that seemed to take several minutes to go by, Scott found himself memorizing every line of her face, then fruitlessly searching his memory looking for a match that he -knew- wasn't there. He did not know her, he was quite sure of that, but on some level below anything he could name, he felt like he -should have-. And, given that the face he was memorizing was not at all unpleasant, he rather hoped he would. "Uh - hello," Scott managed. For her part, Ace only stared in mute astonishment at Rachel, who looked back with puzzled incomprehension. "C'mon, Scott," said Griffin in a softer tone. "Time for us to get out of here. Good to see you again, Ace. Study hard, and if you need help, get word to me through the Doctor. I assume you're still in touch with him?" "As... as much as I can be, yeah," Ace replied, her own eyes wide. "My God, Don. Is that - " Don nodded, once, looking away. "Call me if you need help," he repeated; then he smiled a slightly weary smile, met her eyes, and said, "We trokhai have to stick together." "Yeah... right," Ace agreed, visibly discomfited. "Bye, Scott. Nice meeting you." "Uh, you too," Scott replied. Ace decided that, under the circumstances, she could forgive him for being a little distracted. She wondered if he had any idea what was going on; judging by the blank look that had come over his face when he first saw the girl, she doubted it. Ace went with the three of them to the Quad and stood watching as the Pepsi-machine TARDIS, still festooned with its blinking Christmas lights, faded away. Then she ran to her cell in the dorm. Bugger chronal sychrosyny today - she had to get a message to the Doctor about this right away. /* The Moog Cookbook "Whole Lotta Love" _Ye Olde Space Bande_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited and Bacon Comics Group presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT PROJECT PHOENIX "Lost Property" Starring Donald E. Griffin Logan Kitty Griffin Kurt Wagner Kyra Wagner Scott Summers Kitty Pryde Ace Vinzanthaxatobernel and introducing Rachel Summers Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins With the indispensable help of The Usual Suspects "X-Men: Evolution" characters designed by Steven E. Gordon Ace created by Ian Briggs PROJECT PHOENIX Vol. 1 No. 1 BACON COMICS GROUP 2410 To be continued in: The Scars of the Future E P U (colour) 2006