Why Is It Always Heights?
Disclaimer: I do not have any legal right to the concept and characters of "Eureka"; this bit of fiction is only a fan's flight of fancy.
Episode 414 "Up In The Air" Missing scene - Because I can't believe Jack's friends would let him ride a medicine ball to an altitude of over 10,000 feet without some concern and provision for his safety, this is how I envisioned the process of getting Jack from where he says "Why is it always heights?" at GD, to when we next see him on the medicine ball approaching the bank window:
~~~Eureka~~~Eureka~~~Eureka~~~Eureka~~~Eureka~~~
It was a crazy idea.
Kind of fitting, in a way: a crazy solution for a crazy problem.
But then, almost every day in Eureka ushered in another crazy idea of one kind or another. And the more insane and dangerous the idea was, the better it seemed to work. Moreover, Henry, Fargo, Holly, or Jo had shot down all the possible solutions tossed out during the quick brainstorm session they'd staged. The same thing that had caused the bank to break the laws of gravity was also the factor that made it either impossible or too risky to utilize the SkyCruiser, a jetpack, or any of a dozen other Eureka-designed flight-capable projects. Even Section Five didn't have anything that was immune to the effects of Parish's antique Higgs Field Disruptor.
So, with GD's standard and prototype transportation being basically useless… a medicine ball was the most likely transportation method to successfully take someone up to the floating bank. There were already a dozen of them floating around above Eureka, and Parish's prank on Fargo had already proven that a person could be carried into the atmosphere by a single sphere. It was really all they had.
Once they'd taken a moment to digest that fact that they were going to rely on an armful-sized ball to carry an adult over ten thousand feet into the air, Jo had naturally volunteered. "I should be the one to go up. I have experience as a paratrooper. I know how to work with the air currents."
"Yes, but you don't have Jack's length of arm and leg," Henry had reasoned firmly. "That gives him an advantage in holding onto the medicine ball that you can't match."
Shaking her head, she'd replied, "These balls aren't all that big, Henry, and I work out with this type of equipment all the time." Jack could still feel the heat of Jo's steely gaze daring him to contradict her as she'd added, "I can hang onto one just as well as Carter can."
The mere thought of standing helplessly on the ground and watching his diminutive former deputy rising into the air on what was little more than a slightly oversized balloon had left the Sheriff shuddering in horror. So Jack had said firmly, "Look, I appreciate your willingness to do this, Jo, but the bank is my jurisdiction. It's my responsibility to get up there and deal with the misbehaving contents of the safety deposit vault, not yours." His raised hand had halted her predictable retort. "You've got enough on your plate with all those civilians up at GD right now, and I need you to coordinate with Andy on the inventory of the safety deposit boxes to see if we need to be aware of any other nasty surprises up there. You're way better than me with computer stuff."
Much as Jo disliked letting him take on the more dangerous portion of resolving the situation while she stayed safely on terra firma, she'd known he was right. She was responsible for the safety of the civilians now sheltered at GD, and she was far better than him at anything and everything computer-related.
Jack was relieved that he didn't have to argue more strenuously with Jo. In their new timeline, with her position as head of GD's security, he could no longer assign her to the safer sidelined tasks of crisis resolution. He knew she was fully capable of handling the weirdness Eureka threw at them – sometimes more so than he was – but he had a protective streak towards the younger law enforcement officer. It had nothing to do with chauvinism and everything to do with his affection for the feisty brunette. So of course it was going to be him riding that fragile bag of air into the atmosphere, even though the very thought of it caused him no small amount of apprehension. "Why is it always heights?" he muttered again, ignoring his friends' smirks at his continued grumbling as they set their plans in motion.
It had only taken Fargo and Holly a matter of minutes to rig a little box with a name that sounded like… penny trap? Seriously, who named these things? Who in their right mind wanted to trap pennies? They'd just rolled their eyes when he wanted to know what pennies had to do with the Higgs Field Disruptor, but they assured him it was all he'd need to neutralize the problem. Then they turned their attention to setting up communications and running calculations about all of the airborne objects.
Henry naturally accompanied Jack to the lakeside location he'd calculated as being the optimum "launch site", along with a couple technicians carrying several of GD's remaining exercise balls. Jo, knowing full well how jittery Carter was about high altitudes, delayed her responsibilities at GD to go along so she could outfit her friend with the best protection she could arrange for hitching a ride on a medicine ball – a parachute for Jack and a harness for the ball, hand-delivered by the Enforcer's second-in-command in response to her terse orders to forget the requisition paperwork and get the gear to her ASAP.
Carter enthusiastically accepted both ideas for his safety, and listened carefully as the former Army Ranger gave him a crash course in how to work the various straps of GD's newest chute model while she helped him suit up. "You're lucky; this is much simpler than the ones the Rangers used," she assured him as she finished fitting him into the bulky pack.
His jaw dropped, since he'd just been wondering how he was going to keep all the details straight if he had to act suddenly. "Simpler? This is simpler?" he'd squeaked.
"Yes. Now tell me what this is for," she demanded, and drilled him on the cords and controls until she was sure he understood how to deploy and release the chute. She patted his shoulder, and then turned to Henry, who had been busy rigging the harness on the ball. "Okay, he's ready."
Henry nodded. "Good. Let's hook you up," he said. He clipped the harness leashes to Jack's belt and motioned to the ball, which was currently anchored loosely, floating about three feet off the ground. "Try that out."
Jack eyed the disgustingly small sphere, and frowned at Jo again, evaluating her expression for any sign of lurking laughter. "Are you sure you don't have a bigger one somewhere, Lupo?" She'd been known to amuse herself at his expense in the past, and he wouldn't put it past her to give him the smallest ball available, just for fun.
"The bigger ones already floated away before we knew what was going on," she told him – again – and motioned to the tethers holding the ball in place as the Higgs Field Disruptor exerted pull on it. "Honest, Carter, this one may be smaller, but it has as much lift as the others."
He sighed, skeptically eyeing the ball again before he finally bent and draped himself over it, feeling foolish. "I could hold onto this with one arm," he scoffed to Henry.
"I'm sure you can, Jack. But better safe than sorry. You have a lot of – er – distance to cover on that thing, and based on the drifting positions we've observed for our airborne items, there may be a lot of turbulence once you get up there. You'll be able to use the harness to hold on." At Jack's curled lip, Henry shrugged and urged, "Just try it, okay?"
The Sheriff heaved a long-suffering sigh and nodded. After a little experimenting he found a good grip; the network of leather straps crisscrossed the ball in a variety of lines, offering multiple positions he'd be able to grasp. "I've got it," he said, wriggling a little more to find the optimal position.
"Do you have your ear bud?" Jo asked.
"In my pocket so I won't lose it on the way up," he confirmed, looking over his shoulder at her.
"Perfect. We're all set, then," Jo said with a nod.
"Great. Release the tethers," Henry ordered the tech guys who had grounded the exercise ball.
"Release? No – wait! I'm not ready!" Jack yelped, but it was too late. To his surprise, he'd already risen a good five feet off the ground.
"You'll do fine, Jack," Henry assured him with a smile as his friend's alarmed face drifted by. The sphere was turning as it gained altitude, leaving the lanky rider scrambling along the harness in an attempt to stay on top. "Try to keep your weight evenly distributed," he called, fighting a grin.
"Is he going to be okay?" Jo asked anxiously, head tipped back to watch her former boss.
"He'll get the hang of it. He's a very intuitive guy. Come on, let's get back to GD."
Jack twisted and turned, continually scuttling to get back on the topside of the rotating orb, as he watched his friends' vehicles raise a cloud of dust back toward GD. "You'll do fine, Jack," he mimicked under his breath. "Sure, sure, Jack'll get the hang of it…" He over-adjusted his position and found himself upside down. With a squawk of alarm he squeezed his eyes closed and hung on for dear life as he tried to climb back to an upright position.
"Don't look down," he heard Fargo's voice from his pocket. "It's a lot easier that way."
"D'ya think?" Carter growled. But it wasn't going to do any good to snap at Fargo. "Don't look down, don't look down," he muttered, and looked up instead.
Well! Already the bank didn't look as far away as it had from the ground. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all! Encouraged, Jack smirked. His weight pulled the harness around again, and he set himself to figure out how to maintain a stable posture on the sphere. One of the tricks was to leave a few inches between his waist and the ball while he maneuvered around it, lest his belt snag on one of the straps and cause unexpected jerks in the motion. But he gradually figured it out, just like Henry said he would. It was nice to have friends that believed in you.
The next time he looked up, he was almost a third of the way to the bank – this was actually working!
And it kept working… until he floated high enough to hit differing cross currents that lifted Carter one direction while the bank shifted in another. That wasn't good.
Scowling at his moving target, Jack experimented until he figured out how to change his own rising angle by leaning either right or left, or exerting force forward or backward on the ball. However, the harness proved to be a hindrance. It had loosened with use, and it kept slipping on the surface of the orb, so that he had to continually change his grip to retain the position he needed in order to maneuver the ball. Each correction increased the ball's rotations, forcing him to make yet more adjustments.
Lightweight as the parachute was, the extra mass on his back also proved to be counterproductive to his efforts to control the direction of his drift, catching enough of the wind current to threaten Jack's balance, which then threw off the direction of the medicine ball. Although he fought it, swinging his legs and wrestling the ball around again and again with varying levels of progress, there was still too much distance between him and the solid bulk of the building by the time he was nearing the "ground floor" level of the bank.
He was out of time to counteract the interference of his "safety nets".
Muttering curses beneath his breath, sending a prayer heavenward, and ignoring the thought of what Jo was going to do to him for this when and if he had both feet firmly planted on solid ground again, he grimly unclipped the chute and awkwardly shrugged it off. He could hear the straps flapping in the wind as it fell away, but didn't watch it go.
The medicine ball bounded upward the second the extra mass was gone, and by shifting his position so his body was extended over the ball as if he were flying like Superman – which was kind of cool, at least during the single moment when he was perfectly balanced – the sphere veered closer to the bank. Not near enough, though. He was going to have to get forceful about this, or he wouldn't be close enough to touch the building before he'd risen higher than the roof. He also needed to get rid of the harness that was now meddling with his maneuvering of the ball, snagging his belt at the most inconvenient moments.
"Don't look down, don't look down," he whispered to himself, and unhooked first the clips on his belt and then the clasps Henry had used to fasten the straps around the ball. The harness dropped away with barely a sound, and finally, clinging to the smooth round surface for all he was worth, he was able to achieve the right direction to take him straight to the nearest entry point of the bank – an open window. He'd have to talk to the bank's Manager about leaving the windows open like that; even if the bank didn't carry actual cash, it was a blatant invitation that some unscrupulous passerby might not be able to resist.
Almost close enough… he couldn't let go of the ball until he was sure he could get inside… no second chances here… As he wrestled the ball closer – too high! Bloody Higgs Field Disruptor! It took all his strength and weight to counteract the upward lift. Down! Back down! – good! Now closer… Swinging his legs and twisting, he angled the sphere to bring himself closer to the access point. Yes! That should do it! He heaved his lower body over, pushed his legs through the open window and turned his feet outward to catch on the inside walls on either side of the opening.
Small grunts punctuated each twist of his body as he swiftly shimmied a few inches further in, using the ball to keep himself almost horizontal in the air. As soon as he could bend his knees within the building, he did so, and jammed his feet between a radiator below the window and the wall. Still clinging to the ball as it tried to continue rising, he gave himself the scare of his life by glancing back and seeing exactly how high he'd risen. His eyes widened and he screamed, then frantically thrust the ball away from his chest and grabbed for the window frame.
His heart thundered in his chest as he gripped the window frame and pulled himself fully into the window, finally safe on the sill. "Could there be a more terrifying way to get up? No! I don't think so!" he huffed, wondering how the devil he always seemed to end up doing stuff like this. Very few things freaked him out as much as heights.
But there were other issues to be dealt with right now, so Jack cleared his mind of the nerve-wracking ascent, heaved himself off his perch and moved thankfully onto the solid tiled floor of the bank as he dug the communicator from his pocket and tucked it onto his ear. "I'm in!" he announced – and promptly realized that the floor was tilted beneath him; he went skipping madly across the lobby in search of his balance.
"Good luck, Jack."
And the episode continued…