Chapter 2 Tanner
Everything was fuzzy, I must have just woken up. I really needed some coffee before work this morning, to get my head straight.
I'm on the street...wait how did I get here? I thought I was in bed? I feel fine just discombobulated or so it seemed. It was as if I drank too much at the pub, yet I don't have a sore head, just a confused haze.
I can't believe how all fashion came back around after a few decades. I look down at myself to see a tweed suit I've never seen before...what in hell was going on?
I'm wearing a cap and I pull it off because my head needs a literal scratch. "Hair!" I said out loud as a woman passing by smiled at me. She had big bouffant auburn hair and a bright pink and orange tunic with multi coloured tights.
I spend time running my hand over my locks as I looked at myself in a shop window. The shop sold old fashioned radios and tellies. I have a lovely head full of hair like I did when I was a teen.
The smell was different and muted for a second until I focused on the bakery a few doors down the street. All the shops...what the hell was going on? I walked to the end of what should be my street staring at all the cars and buses! My god it was like I stepped through a time portal...
Just like I spoke to Eve, Bond and M about in her office! I said my greatest fantasy was to be a spy in the 1960's!
I hailed a cab for vauxhall cross. "What do you want to go there for mate? You look ready for work not a walk through a old garden."
I considered what he said and asked him, "what's the date?"
"It's the last day in May Governor."
"What year?"
"Are you having a joke on me mate?"
"No...you see...I got hit...hit on the head yesterday."
"1968, now where are you headed?"
I have to think about that for a second. "SIS headquarters."
"I know it. Century House."
"It really is that badly kept a secret?"
The cabby laughed as he began driving. What in hell was going on?
I hoped M knew what was going on. The last thing that I remembered was Bond and M arriving in her office from Q branch, for a debrief of Bond's last mission.
The cab pulled up to a block of buildings and as I got out I realized that I may just be dreaming all this.
If I was...I've never had a dream that had such vivid sights, sounds and smells as this one. I headed in through the front door. I walk in like I own the place and the guards all nod and smile at me.
A tall attractive woman with her long dark hair pulled back in a bun, with horn rimmed glasses, a white blouse and a black mini-skirt arrived with a clipboard in her hand. "Mr. Tanner so good to see you today. M would like to speak with you straight away."
"Fantastic, I need to speak with her also. Ms?"
"Her? You are funny today Mr. Tanner. And you don't remember me?" The two of them moved towards the lift as they got in alone. "You surely jest after the weekend we just spent together."
The woman pulled her hair free as she cornered me in the lift after hitting the stop button. She kissed me and things quickly spun out of control and the next moment...we were enveloped in a shifting haze. Suddenly I'm buttoning up my shirt and straightening my tie, as the door to the lift opened.
A short cute blonde woman stood there with her hands on her hips. "Mr. Tanner?" She said impatiently. The voice was unmistakably M's. "M?"
"Are you drunk as well as inappropriately playing with M's secretary...agent Tanner?"
M looked to the woman righting her blouse in the lift in the eyes, holding the moment until whoever this girl was she looked down suddenly ashamed. "I think you have somewhere else to be Miss Moneypenny?"
"M wanted me to hurry you along to our tactical meeting, Mr. Tanner." The gorgeous dark haired woman fled under M's steely gaze. That much had not changed at least. M could still instill fear faster than any woman I knew.
"Moneypenny?!"
"Yes Mr. Tanner, are you so addled from your snogging session in the lift that you forgot her name?"
"M...what's going on? Why are we in the 1960's and how the hell am I an agent?
"This is no time for a mental break 008. The Soviets are moving troops towards Czechoslovakia at an alarming rate. We fear that they will invade this summer. I've suggested to M that we need at least you and 007 in the field to get us some more information."
"007?"
"Yes. James Bond." M said it as though she thought I was being obtuse on purpose.
We walked into an office and there was James in one of his silver suit's looking at his mobile. It was at this point I understood that this was all a hallucination. Yet, it seemed far too real to be a dream? Then again it was all fuzzy around the details. Bond looked like he stepped out of our world into this dream reality but no one seemed to notice the differences but me.
"Where are we going then?" I asked and just as suddenly James and I were in a pub in Czechoslovakia chatting with two waitresses. The details were in flux and my understanding that this was all a dream descended upon me, yet I could not make myself wake up and shake it off. Just as suddenly I was back in that London office sitting with Bond in front of two Ms.
Why a 00 agent in the 1960's?
I had forgotten it all like a fog disappearing with the sunshine.
Who had I been speaking with about that?
Why am I and the others in the appropriate fashion yet no one commented on Bond and his attire? Not to mention the mobile he carried and played with as he spoke with M. This M is, or was Vice Admiral Miles Messervy, the first M that MI6 had if my history was correct.
M it seemed got on very well with Bond. Our, very attractive M was on a good footing with the old man also.
She...M was a bit of a surprise.
Her hair was similar but blonde instead of white and she was smaller around the middle. She was bloody cute to be honest!
She was still the same no nonsense strategist that I have known these past years. Bond, well he was still taking risks by flirting with her in front of everyone.
Although, I suppose it was the 60's and gender politics, if my memory served...men took liberties.
I don't think that there would be nothing against them being together here.
I wonder what Bond would think of seeing her like this? She really was...is...oh this time thing is difficult...M's a cute little thing. Not that she wasn't an attractive woman in her later years it was just...where on earth was all this coming from. I suppose in the depth of a dream you would be the youth you remembered yourself to be.
I'm younger with hair!
"008 I would stop staring at me like that! I'm not use to it from you and you look like you're perplexed about something." M, well not the M but my M said.
"008 is just stunned by your beauty, just as I have always been Mrs. Mansfield. Shame that another man captured your heart and married you before we had a chance at great romance." Bond said with a wistful smirk on his face. "I suppose that there is still time." He finished with cockily.
"Ha, Bond...young Mrs. Mansfield is far too intelligent a woman to get involved with either of you two. Let's get down to business shall we." M said ending Bond's flirtations and it was then that I notice a metal orb on the bar cart in the corner.
It seemed important but where had I seen that before?
I had to grab the arms of the chair for the dizziness that overwhelmed me. When I opened my eyes we were on a plane. I closed them again and opened them to be in a hotel room with a Russian woman telling me something in Russian, yet I'm able understand it as if she were speaking English. What on earth was going on?
The woman morphed suddenly into Eve...my Eve.
"Eve do you know what's going on?"
"I don't know Bill. This is your dream not mine."
"Why are we here then?"
"To help some important people escape before the Soviets take over Czechoslovakia, would be my guess."
"You, me and Bond stuck in the late 60s and looking for who?"
"I don't know. Didn't M brief you?"
"Yes but there were two M's and I was distracted in the lift by Moneypenny….not you...but another one. And then M was barely 30 and very cute."
"Get it together Tanner. A spy pays attention to the details, beyond how cute their boss is!"
"I know Eve, but Bond was flirting with her and the weirdness of Sir Miles being M and standing in front of me made me blank on the details."
"Bond always flirts why did that rile you?"
"Because he was far more serious then I had expected and it's my dream so why wasn't I the one flirting with her?"
"I can't answer to your subconscious feelings for M but you may have a bit of a crush."
"What! No...I mean yes, perhaps but what does that say about me snogging Miss Moneypenny in the lift?"
"She wasn't me though?" Eve said looking confused and a bit but out, or at least that was how I hoped she felt.
"No...I wish she were...wait you're not really you so it's ok that I say that to you...bloody hell! I'm so confused."
"No...I am part of you in a representation of Eve. You may learn a few things about yourself in all this Tanner."
"Now I'm beginning to stress like I'm about to walk into an exam I didn't study for in only my pants!"
Calm down Tanner. You have to try to guide the dream, like you are creating it yourself."
"I will try."
Med lab HQ in London:
"During REM sleep, the limbic system of the brain, the hippocampus and amygdala are extremely active. This is why we experience the bizarre, illogical and disorganized imagery in dreams and the absence of logic." The doctor said as he, Gareth Mallory and Q stood over the four beds.
Eve, Tanner, Bond and M are hooked up to machines and the readings are consistent to deep REM sleep.
"What happened exactly Q?" Mallory asked.
"This machine we were working on was in a case and 007 decided to pick it up and examine it. He tossed it in the air as M and I went over my report from his last mission. M began to chastise Bond for his careless behaviour and when she realized the time left abruptly with Bond following. He absentmindedly still had the device and was lobbing it in the air like a toy ball. It was not intentional. You can watch the video feed of the occurrence if you like."
"No that will not be necessary. Just explain what happened to them so that I can make my report to the minister and the PM."
"Nothing should have happened at all. There is a sequence that needs to be entered to set it off and somehow they did and it turned on. The device only affects the handler, so they all must have touched it with their bare skin while it was active in order to be immobilized. We were about to test the device and it does no harm to the body but does put the intended into a deep vivid dreamscape based on discussions and occurrences that they had prior to contact."
The doctor intruded for a moment. "Mr. Tanner has been muttering about Miles Messervy and M, Czechoslovakia and the 1960's."
"Record everything they say and they should all come out of this within four hours but as I said it is untested. I will try to reverse the orb and bring it back to get them out earlier." Q said as he moved to the hall, Mr. Mallory following him.
"I do hope that nothing of a secret nature comes out of them."
"That is what this is designed for and we are in a controlled location. I will go over the recordings and destroy them after M reviews them. In the meantime I have created a portal into our system for your use, while you are here to look over the operation."
"Thank you Q. I will go up to the office and see what I can do to calm the PM after all this. I cannot say that this looks good and that M's not going to have problems over it after all is said and done."
"It was an accident. She should not be held responsible for my failings! I will hand in my resignation as soon as she is awake. I insist that I take all responsibility for this."
"Very well Q." He said looking very concerned for the older gentleman. "I'm sure she will fight to keep you. I assume that the two of you have known each other a very long time."
"Yes, I've known her since the 1960's. But be that as it may, I refuse to harm her career for the amateurish mistake of one of mine, not securing a dangerous invention." Q told Mallory before he left for M's office to get back to work.
It would mean overtime for the staff to try to repair all the damage that they had inadvertently done.
To be continued...