The second day on the job was more businesslike than the first. Q was getting ready in his office to present Q division with their new head. He was strangely nervous. He had heard that the Quartermasters rarely lasted more than a few years and he was out to prove them wrong.
He clipped his new permanent ID to his belt loop and looked at himself in one of the windows, adjusting his glasses and one of his stray curls. He had much to do today. He had called a meeting of Q division for fifteen minutes this morning, picking a window in which no one had anything pressing to do. That had been harder than expected. They were to meet from 10:06 to 10:21, something that sounded irregular, but everything ran like clockwork at MI6. Planning everything down to the minute was more of a necessity than a quirk. He sat instead of pacing and ran over what he was going to say again. There wasn't much to present, really, but he wanted to give the division time to adjust to someone not only completely new, but probably the youngest out of all of them. He knew it would be a shock, and he wanted to be ready for everything that would come at him. Insults seemed likely, but he would see when the meeting started.
Q got to the meeting room unnecessarily early and opened his omnipresent laptop to tap away at his security system upgrade plans- a pet project of his which he thought he'd do after he finished getting Q division in more order. First, though, Q had decided on some major upheaval in the section, thinking it would work to set it all in order. He was surprised when the door opened with an electronic beep to let in the first arrivals, a diverse bunch of people from young women to men in their fifties. He smiled and braced himself as he shut his laptop.
"Welcome," he started, gesturing to the large table. "Please sit, I'm sure everyone else will be here soon." He was inwardly glad that he hadn't tripped over a word yet. They sat and people started to flood in as 10:06 got closer. Finally, when the last of Q division had entered, he stood.
"You entered this meeting today expecting a new Quartermaster." There was a buzz around the room after the last word, people speculating about who it could be. Many of them glanced up at him and turned to shake their heads, thinking that the young-looking guy definitely couldn't be a Quartermaster. He let the buzz of chatter die down after everyone had quieted, apparently all thinking that someone older and more important-looking was going to enter soon and that they should watch for him or her. They were wrong.
"And here I am." Q said, smiling and bowing slightly. There was almost a roar that ran from the front of the room to the back as everyone incredulously talked a few times faster than normal, looking around to make sure he was the only new person in the room. They all knew that no one had been promoted, or this meeting would hardly be happening this way. The shocked air of the place was thick, and this time the talking did not die down, in fact, it just got louder and louder as the seconds ticked away. The entirety of Q division was shocked and disbelieving. Q stood his ground, trying his hardest to project the quiet, calm authority that M did so easily. It was harder than it seemed while people were one lick of professionalism away from pointing and laughing at you. His pale, almost gray eyes flicked to each member of Q division in turn, and under his attempt at a commanding gaze they actually quieted. Q felt a small surge of pride within him, thinking that getting these people to accept him might be easier than he had originally thought.
Once his eyes had traveled all over the large, wood-paneled conference room, he smiled. "I've been informed that I don't exactly exemplify what the division was expecting," he stated, having decided to put it mildly. A murmured agreement made its way around the long, oval shaped table. He thought he could hear a few quiet laughs, but he wrote that away to paranoia and continued. "But I assure you I will be everything that the division needs me to be." The minutes were ticking away- the pauses for reaction had taken much longer than he had estimated. He needed to wrap it up, do it well, and do it quickly.
"Q division is already in the 21st century, as is the rest of MI6. I don't disagree with that. You as a whole have done some amazing things, and I applaud each and every one of you for the important technological advances you've made here, and for keeping our agents safe." He began to clap quietly, and the room began to join in. Soon there was loud, hearty applause, with smiles on even the oldest and most bitter-looking agents' faces, smiles that he imagined hadn't been in place for a long time. He began to speak above the applause, and his audience granted him respect.
"But we need to keep ahead of the game. Q division needs to be excellent, and we will be. To stay ahead of the enemy we must keep ourselves together, and pick up the pieces in this time of chaos. Once we are together again, we will be faster and more advanced than anything our opposition has ever seen. We will be light-years ahead, and we will work together to bring our humble Q division into the 22nd century, many decades in advance!" He spoke with conviction, adrenaline humming through his veins and in his words. He had no doubt now that he would be able to lead this division creatively and effectively. He didn't realize that he was grinning until he began to laugh quietly over the raucous applause of many people who were probably only running on caffeine. The clock's minute hand ticked to the end of the meeting, and people streamed out with smiles on their faces. One older man who had been sitting near the back came up to Q.
"You've proven you can speak well, boy. Now lead well." He nodded respectfully.
"I will, sir. I will," he said, sticking out his hand. The other man took it.
"Welcome, Q," he said, cracking a smile. "Do us good." He shook his hand and left.
Q nearly collapsed into the chair, running his fingers through his brown mop. He felt proud having effectively introduced himself to his division, and now he had to lead it.
He spent the next few days starting to implement his preliminary plan for the division. He wanted Q division to have an edge over the big technology companies and weapons companies which provided gadgets to their enemies, and he decided that the most effective way to do it would be personalization. Field agents and Q divisioners with compatible personalities and ways of thinking would be paired, and they would use their compatibility to their advantage, with the people from Q division finding out and designing exactly what their agents needed in order to gain a level of finesse and effectiveness from the technology that would otherwise be missing. Also, having pairs would let the agents place their trust in someone who knew them well and knew their likes and dislikes, creating trust within the pair as well as a more bonded and integrated MI6. Agents and their handlers, as he called them, seemed to be the right idea. Handlers was a name already used at the intelligence agency, for those who helped the agent through tough spots in their mission and corresponded with them, but Q felt that applying permanence and having the person who actually designed and tested the technology be the one to walk the agent through using it would be an effective and reliable idea.
The first day was spent pairing up the newer field agents and Q division operatives. Many of them, partly due to the fact that both sets tended to be younger, were easier to pair. They were less set in their ways and more likely to accept change, as well as being more social and flexible. He got ten pairs set and logged into his tablet, a pet he'd picked up as a prototype from one of the R&D teams downstairs. It seemed that they had already taken a liking to him. Q had observed over his few days here that the teams most involved in design and research liked having freedom and gladly accepted a new leader who was different with unconventional ideas. Their jobs were all about testing new things and seeing what worked. He thought they would be fans of his social experiment of sorts. The people whose jobs had more to do with personal relationships and those who were more embedded in the MI6 hierarchy (as opposed to spending countless hours without seeing another human while poring over gadgetry) were less welcoming of change and more likely to keep away from him, probably gossiping over lunch about how he would be useless and taking bets on how long he would last.
He tended to avoid them at all costs. Q was more of a loner himself, much happier to spend hours embedded in the constant flow and hum of technology than the irritating, organic mess of humanity. He promised himself that he would be doing much more of that once he got his new ideas up and running. For now, alas, there were plenty of humans to deal with.
Q was happy that at the end of his first few days pairing that no one was really unsatisfied. Next he would tackle the next level of agents, the ones who had stuck around for at least a decade. He planned to put field agents and Q operatives with roughly the same level of time at MI6 together, thinking that they were likely to have gone through the same things, if not at opposite ends of the spectrum. They seemed as if they would have roughly the same tolerance for change and were at least somewhat aware of each other, in opposition to the newer ones who were still getting used to the job. It was challenging work, and he spent countless hours over a list with a pen, crossing out names and scribbling quotation marks. Q might love technology, even favor it over people much of the time, but nothing beat a good pen and paper list. There was something about its organic nature that he favored when working with nature's variables- people.
Finally he had some idea of the pairings, and finalized them on his tablet while finishing the last of his brewed-hours-ago Earl Grey before going to bed. He knew they may not be perfect, and there was many a spare agent who could not be paired, be it an excess of field or Q agents, if not their undesirable temperament. He thought the number of spare Q and field operatives would generally even out, leaving them to assist each other as they saw fit, while (especially the Q spares) they could help out others as well.
The next morning brought some anxiety as he realized that he had overslept, probably due to staying up so late before retiring to bed. He had agonized over the list more than he probably had needed to, and it had cost him in hours. He dressed in one of his nicer cardigans, a dark gray which made his manner of dress and his eyes seem particularly sharp, and a matching tie along with black pants, hastily grabbing his good glasses (he wore an old pair at home- less potential damage to the nice ones) and rushed out, hailing a taxi instead of walking.
Q arrived in his office only minutes after MI6 had begun buzzing for the day, relieved it had not taken him longer to arrive. He gave himself only an hour to find and inform the agents of their pairings, and set out to achieve his task. The first pair consisted of a 12-year Q agent and a similarly 12-year veteran of field agency. They were both buried deep in their respective divisions, and it took the somewhat harried Quartermaster ten minutes to find and talk to each of them, setting him back twenty minutes. He could just post announcements, but he preferred to see the agents' reactions in person. It helped him gauge how good his decision was and how likely it was to work out. In the case of this one, it worked well, and he smiled, a bit proud that his fretting was for naught.
Satisfied that his first pair of the day had worked, he proceeded to seeking out the next two agents on his list, a pair of 15-year veterans of MI6 who knew each other's ups and downs already. The remaining people on the list were paired just as well, and he was satisfied with his day's work. There was much to be done, though, as the next bunch of agents on his list were the Double 0s, the most lethal and effective of all of MI6's field agents. The true spies, those who would happily die in the name of Queen and Country, had to be partnered up with the lucky (and in a few cases not so lucky) Q division operatives who could handle them.
There was much work to be done on Q's part. This likely meant more than a few nights over pen and paper and cold cups of Earl Grey, trying to find matches for the often-impossible Double 0 agents. That very night he brewed a pot and settled in for the long haul, intending to put his mind to good use finding compatible partners for those who killed in the name of their country often and ruthlessly. He sighed, the first of many for the night, and picked up his pen, writing the first number. 001 would fortunately be easier to pair than most, as the agent possessed both a calm temperament (not just the illusion of one, which was all too common among the higher ranking field agents) and a fondness for organization. He trawled through the (digital this time) list of Q operatives without field agent counterparts and found one on just the second read-through. An essential part of Q division for going on 16 years, the agent that Q found was levelheaded though creative. He thought they would work exceptionally well together.
He tackled one Double 0 every night that week. 002 and 005 gave him far more trouble than he had anticipated, but like 001, 004 and 006 went by almost too easily. Their pairings ended up being much more diverse than Q had originally thought, with young to old, female to male, newbie to experienced, and some other borders being crossed. 003 gave him some trouble, but after a few run-throughs of the handy operatives list he stumbled upon the agent's perfect handler.
Now for 007.
Q knew the tradition. One picked up these things fast when joining MI6. First you learned the acronyms, then the traditions. He currently held a record for learning the acronyms, so he had gotten to tradition fast. Either way, he knew what was expected of him and he decided not to deviate from it.
He would become 007's full time handler. The top field agent for the Quartermaster. He knew he could deal with Bond. His brilliant mind and nimble fingers would be a good counterweight to Bond's brash but creative ruthlessness. He hoped that they would be compatible. One did not saddle Bond on someone else.
He looked forward to his first Bond assignment with a mixture of excitement and nerves.
It was absolutely justified.