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An exploration of Matt and Gideon's mission and how the winners (in this case Philip Burton) re-write history to suit their purposes, fulfil their desires and hide their mistakes. Also, addresses Helen Cutter's access to future technology, how the future predators and other giant creatures could have evolved in such a short space of time, and the sudden and cataclysmic seismic events as suggested by the landscape in Episodes 3.8 and 3.10.

Set during Episode 4.3

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Reflections

Matt Anderson finally answered his phone, as Jess directed him to the anomaly call at a local theatre. He looked apologetically at Gideon. He didn't want to leave his father but duty called and one thing Gideon had raised him to always do was his duty.

"Forget about me Matt." Gideon was trying to hide the emotions that were making self-control difficult. "Do your job."

Gideon looked sadly into the distance, his mind on the departing figure of his son. He knew he was dying and had little time left. He wanted to spend it with his son, but knew too well the importance of the Mission. He could not be responsible for diverting Matt – it was imperative that Matt succeed, for all their sakes.

Gideon's thoughts drifted back to when he was Matt's age with a young family. The world was already dying, even before it all went to hell. The skies were increasingly toxic, clean water was becoming scarce, crops rarely grew outside of hydroponic farms and people were already burrowing underground to avoid the poisonous surface.

The weather had been declining for decades. The link to the disappearance of all anomalies except the Great Spot over what had once been London had been accepted for some time. The atmospheric disturbance in the immediate area of the Great Spot had caused the wholesale destruction of that ancient city. A satellite installation of the ARC had remained to carry out analysis and research of the Great Spot swirling overhead, but the city was largely abandoned.

The primary function of the ARC was how to neutralize the Great Spot or at least to mitigate its negative influence on the atmosphere. Mapping the historical locations of the anomalies and investigating how the Great Spot had come into being took the skills of the top experts at the ARC.

Philip Burton had died childless nearly a century before. He was the acknowledged expert on anomalies, immersing himself in their study and harnessing their energy with new technologies of his devising. He had survived the lab accident that killed his assistant Connor Temple and Philip's concubine, Abigail Maitland, but the injuries sustained claimed his life just a few years later. To secure his legacy, Burton had commissioned brain mapping technology in the hope that one day, he could be re-born.

A cloning program was started to create a new Philip Burton. Progress on the new technology was slow and took decades to become advanced enough for human cloning. The first clones were physically identical to the master copy, but were almost blank canvasses mentally, capable of obeying without question only the most rudimentary commands. A neural clamp had been created to control them, before a more efficient voice control system was established. Still they were little more than puppets.

The breakthrough came when a clone was created implanted with all Philip Burton's knowledge plus all the expertise of other ARC specialists. Adam Burton was beyond a genius. The problem was that he had been grown with no humanity, no compassion and no ethics or morals. None of these traits were deemed important to his experiments to stop the Great Spot.

He built a machine to create a manmade anomaly, reasoning that this would destabilize the Great Spot causing both anomalies to implode and close. No argument for more analysis of the simulations, or for consideration of the possible repercussions for humanity were heeded. Adam went ahead anyway and created his anomaly.

The ramifications were catastrophic. Not only did the combination of two massive anomalies cause huge earthquakes and violent volcanic eruptions across the planet. Their combination caused a new mega anomaly to open, with satellite anomalies on all continents. Analysis showed that the mega anomaly would only be sustained for about six days before closing and hopefully allowing what remained of the Earth's crust to stabilize. There had been no other anomalies in decades so the technology to lock it had been lost and there was no time to devise a new device.

Unfortunately the Anomaly Dating Calculator (antique technology invented by Philip Burton and stored in the ARC museum) showed the mega anomaly had opened to approximately one million years in the future.

The guards of heavily armed soldiers were unable to prevent the hordes of diverse giant creatures that poured through from the future in search of prey. The worst of these predators were quick, strong, intelligent and capable of camouflaging themselves like a chameleon. They hunted by sound rendering conventional weapons, even the EMDs, virtually useless. No continent was spared the wholesale slaughter as highly evolved giant insects and predators from Earth's future ran rampant across the surface whilst burrowing creatures attacked the less protected underground bunkers.

The mega anomaly and its many satellites did close as predicted and the seismic activity did abate, but the damage was done. The atmosphere continued to deteriorate exacerbated by the volcanic activity. It was now toxic beyond repair.

The ARC had failed spectacularly. The clone, Adam Burton, could not help as a distraught soldier had put a bullet through Adam's inhuman brain after learning of the loss of his family when a large chunk of South East England literally collapsed into a kilometre deep hole created when the Eurasian tectonic plate sheered in two.

The only possible solution to save humanity and the planet was the past. To discover where it all went wrong and try to prevent it. The ARC scientists already knew the anomalies were a natural phenomenon linked to the periodic reversing of the Earth's polarity. That they became more common as the reversal, or the Convergence as it was dubbed, approached. They believed someone had meddled with the anomalies and stopped Convergence, so instead of the poles reversing the magnetic forces caused significant disruption to the atmosphere and seriously destabilised weather patterns. At some point around this time the Great Spot was created.

A plan was devised, teams identified and years of ruthless training began. Due to the constant battle against the predators, the ARC only had the time and power to send three trained teams back to different points in history to pinpoint and prevent the destruction of the planet. Devices were created to open a controlled anomaly to a precise time and location and then close it once incursion was complete. No other influence on the timelines was allowed. The Mission was to identify and neutralise the threat then terminate themselves as their own time would no longer exist and they could not risk further contamination of the time line. No personal interaction with the indigenous population or non-essential tampering with the timeline was permitted.

Gideon Anderson and his son Matt went back the farthest, to 2008. The goal, to have infiltrated the ARC and achieved a position of authority in the ARC hierarchy within one year. If anyone was tampering with anomalies, the ARC was the best place to track them. All relevant historical and biographical data was sent with Matt disguised as a period wrist watch. So much information had been lost during the upheavals of the preceding century that little was known of that time.

Shaking his head sadly, Gideon brought his thoughts back to the present.

So far the Mission was progressing to schedule, but they were no nearer to identifying how or who would destroy the future. Gideon felt that this was looking increasingly like the right time, but it was taking too long to identify who was responsible and Matt risked getting side-tracked by his growing familiarity with the ARC team. Gideon would have to use what little time remained to him to keep Matt focussed.

However his familiarity could yet prove useful. The discrepancies in Philip Burton's personal biography were beginning to look suspicious - Abigail Maitland was very obviously in an established relationship with Connor Temple. Was she really the type to abandon him so quickly for the older man? Matt would have to look into that. If Burton could lie about that, what else could he lie about?

Gideon turned and watched his son's back disappear around the side of the house. He knew that both of them had already sacrificed their lives for the Mission. At least Gideon could die and be buried in this still fertile and beautiful world. His son would continue, isolated and alone, until he either completed the Mission, or died trying. Humanity and the Earth demanded nothing less.

tbc