THE PROTECTING THE PAST AFFAIR
Chapter 2
"I would…hate having to promote someone else…today"
At that self-same moment, 43 years into their previous present, but 1964's still-distant future…
Darien Driscoll was decidedly inconsolable.
The man in the mask of metal, gems, and ivory, so triumphantly hiding a hideous half-face, just as one ruined hand was hidden via the black leather glove worn so worrisomely, could not easily accept a certain something that had recently taken place.
"How the hell can this be possible?" Darien ranted tyrannically within the opulent office situated six hundred meters below the surface far removed from prying eyes, save for two super-secret agents of U.N.C.L.E. who had used THRUSH's R.A.G.E. device to end up in the dimmed-by-decades past. "I risk my sanity…my health…to travel back in time and use a suitcase of explosives to kill Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo of that time-period…only to wind up facing down those same enemies before the entrance into U.N.C.L.E.! There can be only one to blame for such a shameful aftermath!"
Even as those summoned by the mask-wearing Darien Driscoll into his office inside the subterranean THRUSH headquarters far beneath the Nebraska soil shook with uncertainty as to who would wind up dead…
"Dr. Travis Raphael!"
Suddenly, those standing near said doctor swiftly stepped away from his fear-racked person. The horrified head tech of R.A.G.E….Retro-temporal Anti-Gamma Emitting unit.
"N-no, Mr. D-Driscoll, s-sir!" stammered the scared-to-death individual who'd ostensibly been forced at Glock gunpoint to perform computerized programming maneuvers needed to send Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo back as he had done with Darien. "I…I couldn't h-help it! Th-they were going to sh-shoot me!"
Glaring hard at the shaking, sweating, terrified tech via the single solitary eyehole located over that one good eye, Darien's transmitted-via-mask's-mini-speaker voice vociferously said, "And what do you think I will do to you, Doctor?"
"Nooooooo!"
1964
"Okay, you can stop, Mr. Solo," said Dr. Maxwell Fallon, an U.N.C.L.E.-employed medical doctor dressed in crisp shirt-and-tie as well as sharp white smock with an upside-down triangular badge clipped to it, color-coded for medical and emblazoned with the number "5".
Wearing a workout outfit, short-sleeved shirt and short, but not too short!, jogging togs, Napoleon Solo, perspiring profusely and very heavily breathing, stepped off the treadmill dreading what medical might dream up next in order to test his past-his-prime physicality.
"Thank God, Doc, I was beginning…to think…you were trying…to do what THRUSH hadn't…in over four decades! Whew!"
"Mm-hm," hummed Dr. Fallon while writing on the test-results form attached to a typical clipboard. "Mr. Kuryakin…?"
"Certainly, Doctor," readily replied Illya, dressed in a similar manner as Napoleon, who was currently trying to resume normal breathing and secretly cursing himself for having not completed proper physical training in that now-lost future time-period.
Then, with embarrassing ease, Illya Kuryakin completed the controlled treadmill test without heavy breathing or excessive sweating, causing Napoleon Solo to snidely snort, "Showoff."
While writing in regards to Illya's physical testing, consisting of the treadmill as well as several other such somatic exertions…
Napoleon couldn't help but secretly hope that such was most definitely the last of all actual exams, saying, "Well, Doc, since Illya and I didn't die of a heart attack, we must've passed."
"Yes," nodded Dr. Fallon while looking over all the written-down data, "for men your age…the two of you are ready for active agent duty. Especially you, Mr. Kuryakin."
Smirking in implacable pride, Illya answered proudly, "Thank you, Doctor. I do try."
Napoleon mimed a significantly sarcastic reaction and mockingly silent laugh, while slowly starting to exit so as to steam, shower, and dress, saying, "Okay, Doc…here's hoping I won't have to come this way again for the duration of my time in this time."
"Uh, Mr. Solo, just a moment, please," said Dr. Fallon before Napoleon Solo could slip away. "I'm afraid, for you, there's still one more examination."
"What do you mean, 'for you'? What about Illya?" sheepishly asked Napoleon, already fretting over what said examination might actually entail.
"Oh, Mr. Kuryakin has already had his," Dr. Maxwell Fallon explained as Illya smiled devilishly, "while you were still complaining about peeing in a cup."
"Have fun, Napoleon," quietly needled Illya Kuryakin even as Dr. Fallon slipped on a single latex glove.
"I'd really rather be facing down a dozen armed THRUSH drones right about now," Napoleon nervously lamented to himself even as he prepared to pull down his short-cut jogging togs for that type of examination.
2007
"I trust you shall not disappoint me," harshly said the menacingly masked Darien Driscoll as he visited the control room of the observation blister overlooking the miles-long super-subatomic accelerator powering R.A.G.E. "Dr. Mason Battaglia."
The rapidly promoted, in the wake of a quickly killed Dr. Travis Raphael, new tech-in-charge, gulped loudly and shakily said, "N-no, s-sir, Mr. D-Driscoll."
"How soon before I can be sent back to 1964?" asked the masked Darien Driscoll with little in his speaker-delivered voice to suggest a second disappointment would be at all acceptable.
"Uh," doubtfully fretted Dr. Battaglia, "l-less than three hours, s-sir."
Stepping a little too close via mask of metal, gems, and ivory, Darien threatened through its mini-speaker system, "See that it is less, Dr. Battaglia. I would dearly hate having to promote someone else in this section today."
Dr. Mason Battaglia, again, gulped loudly while timorously answering, "Y-yes, s-sir."
"Now," sneered the sinisterly masked master of THRUSH to no one in particular, while sweeping out of the observation blister's control room. "To find something I might change in 1964 to so disrupt the expected aspects of the present that those obnoxious men from U.N.C.L.E. will be utterly obliterated at long last."
END OF CHAPTER 2