-REC IR071-INTERVIEW ROOM, BLOCK 1 FLOOR 3, SETI CAMPUS, OKLAHOMA
ETL/6 DAYS FOLLOWING THE INCIDENT
The pleasantries are almost over before they begin; neither of them see any reason to beat about the bush. This in the Interview Room, after all, and dissimulation only led one onto the path from investigative fryer to legal fire. So far, this new case is drifting towards the edge of the metaphorical fryer.
Still, ever the good cop and the trustworthy everyman, he doesn't let on how serious all of this is becoming. How he's begun to collate an incident file for this new interviewee and her accomplices. How, if all goes well (and it will go well, at this rate), at the very least, one of them will be losing a few unofficial privileges. And, since this is already serious enough, he'll be looking at the misconduct charges today.
Above them, the lights turn harsh, accusing. And directly under the one the interviewer privately calls 'the limelight', Mrs Galbraith sits, looking almost exactly the same as last time. Her position away from the door. The perennial furrow of her brow betraying the numerous small worries of a data analyst, further set by a lifetime of long hours spent peering at reams of paper. She watches him impassively, arms crossed over her chest, the rhythmic scrape of her faded court shoes against the carpet accompanying the rustling of his well-stuffed case.
The second interview is always the one that makes them nervous. To the interviewer, the second interview is both a follow-up and an indicator that the first interview did not gather sufficient information to form conclusions (or a verdict, as his superiors liked to sneer). To the person in the limelight, the second interview was a condemnation; your case is suspicious.
But again, Mrs Galbraith's a new model of thinking to him. She's not as nervous as someone in her position should be; impressive, given that she's been found guilty of unauthorized access.
The interviewer decides to start from there. "So. Lesley and O'Shane found you, Holloway, our doctor and Miss Manson in the mains supply room, which, as you now-sorry, if you could insert a 'know by' before that 'now'-is a restric'ed area." He flicks through his file and indicates the relevant passage in the employee handbook, to which she responds with a little nod.
"Well, now that we're done clearing up the preview...last interview, we can start covering your acts related to the supply room. Now, Maurice...since he was MIA for a whole m-day-" and at this she mentions that it was actually five, "Five whole days, you all decide to leave your positions time when the ins-ti-tu-te is facing a crisis with employee sc-sd-shel..."
"Schedules?" she offers.
"Quite. So you left to gloo-search for Maurice. From that looks like you were maybe taking advantage of the chaos to cover your...not entirely above-board investigation."
"I-we didn't think we were needed..."
"How so? What about Mr Holloway? As a technician he'd to recover and redistribute the sh...time-ti-tables, and Doctor Chekhov had to organize li-aison between his and other departments."
"They left backup-"
"Mrs Galbraith, you know backup was no replacement for direct involvement. What's more, none of you reported the absence, Maurice's cover did. So...why go thrall-I mean, to all the bother? Unless you had reason to suspect Maurice's situation was more dire than unplanned sick leave?"
His cold gaze remains on her the entire time, and he notices the veneer start to sag. By the time he is done, she wears a faintly harrowed expression.
"Okay. When did you find out Maurice was definitely missing?"
"Six days ago."
"And in the time between the discovery and your incident at the supply room, you were actively investigating his absence?"
"A bit."
"Really. You looked at CV-C-C-T-V footage, right?" He taps the desk to mark each letter, as if to feel out the rhythm of the acronym.
Her eyes widen, and she begins to turn a little green.
"You'd Holloway with you, and none of the cameras leading twi-to-and-in the supply hall managed to record you; the four of you were absent in the halls but not Lesley and O'Shane, and the supply hall cameras were turned off without approval, so we had to check the logs for tampering."
She looks quite horrified now, and the interviewer takes her reaction as confirmation of his suspicions.
"Would you like trif-refute any of the accusations? You still have the right, y'know."
Again, she offers no response.
"If not, why're you so secretive about finding Maurice?"
Mrs Galbraith finally meets his eyes, allowing him to see the rim of tears in hers. He isn't surprised, not really. But they do look quite congruous amidst the rest of her carefully blank features.
Shortly afterwards, he concludes the first part of the day's interview and leaves her clutching nonexistent pearls and crying soundlessly. Soon, Lesley will be there to help her settle.
The interviewer strikes a confident enough figure as he makes his way to his office-one might easily take his haste for a businesslike urgency. His usual exchanges with the other employees lining his path are now succinct; a meaningful rattle or two of his folder and they retreat.
Illuminated only by a desk lamp and the few slices of Palm Beach-type sunshine that made it through the blinds, his office sits dutifully how he left it-locked away from everyone else, a sanctum for the working intellectual. Almost reverent, he shuts his door behind him, the wood giving a soft, charmingly antiquated clunk as it fits into its' frame.
After interviews like this one, he feels the unshakeable urge to take notes, to fill every square inch of the blank box for observations on the back of the interview transcript, not out of a desire to absolve himself of guilt, just a professional interest in the case. Yes, maybe a little awkwardness still lingered, but not enough to cloud his judgement during review...
Rrrinng. Rrrinng. Rrrrrriiiinnnggg!
Frowning, the interviewer plucks the telephone from its' perch and holds it near his face, in the same manner as he might hold an ornery python. "Speaking. How may I be of assistance?"
The voice that comes out of the telephone has all the cadence of a TV ad, and is one he is regrettably familiar with: SETI OK's campus director. The interviewer finds himself caught on the spot; the gentleman in question is not known for his patience, and his Manhattanite accent is worthy of its' own dictionary.
"Well, Mister I!" he booms, cackling through the rest of his report before the other man has a chance to fully process his words, let alone formulate a coherent response. "That new case of yours (keh-heh-hee)-going well? Must (hah) be, you've already managed to caa-rack one of those perps (snort) of yours, eh? Absolutely miserable (ha-ha!), says she wants to go home."
"I...She can't leave right now, we still have the next half of the interview to t-do," he insists, peering at the last interview's transcript and recalling: They were ringing Maurice's pager, and no reply was ever given. The pager was found in the supply room without its' owner.
"Cold, yet excellent form, as usual. Though with her state I don't see a lot of work getting done. We'll just park her on a side desk, make sure the other girls in Data don't start fussing over her."
Half-listening, he makes a noise of agreement, feeding the first page of Mrs Galbraith's statements into his typewriter.
"Speaking of fuss, they were arrested for breaking into a supply room, huh? (Nah, put them here, I'll sign for 'em in a sec.) How'd they get in? Word is that Rocket Junior cracked security and messed with the schedules. (Chrissake. Tell Miss Marple outside to exhume the paperwork then.)"
He continues to painstakingly stamp out notes that crowd the insufficient margins, letters brushing the edges of the paper on one side and almost running into the words of the transcript on the other. Whilst his stabs at the keys cause the handset to slip further out of the crook of his neck and shoulder, he gives his new favorite canned reply: the details of the case are being verified.
"Still ironing things out?" the director's voice drawled, every one of its' vowels sneering at him. "Honestly, you're the biggest stickler for procedure that I've ever known. I'd just hurry up and fire 'em if I were you. [Loud clatter, swearing] (Careful, I said! Jeez. Morons.) We can afford that. (Not you. That was an expensive mistake, buddy.)"
"We haven't completed the investigation yet, so the dissmal...I mean, termination of employment would be unfair," the interviewer insisted, cringing at his latest stumble over standard vocabulary. Dis-MISS-al.
There was a laugh as he said this, and not of the pleasant type."Yuh-uh, well listen Rumpole, this ain't a court drama, it's a cut-and-dried misconduct case. [Thud, thud] At least let go of young Holloway. He's a liability to the company and quite frankly a two-faced little-"
Hastily cutting off the speaker's profane frankness, he makes the executive decision to wind their conversation down. "Rest assured, sir, that all indidi-er, indi-vi-duals found guilty will face the appropriate consequences." Damn. After all this time, it still tripped him up, and at the worst possible moment, too.
With a snigger, the director gives his usual farewell-two parts insult and one part suavity-and leaves the interviewer surrounded by his hoard of incomplete work, face aflame with humiliation.
Something, he thinks, must be done about this.
-REC AH11073-ACCESS HALL 11, BLOCK 2 FLOOR 1, SETI CAMPUS, OKLAHOMA
ETL/6 DAYS FOLLOWING THE INCIDENT
Oily, overly-familiar and grossly overconfident, the director's face lies in wait around the corner for the interviewer as he zips out of the elevator and enters Block 2 territory. Upon running into the larger-than-life-sized face on the year's new poster, he burns with the entirely inappropriate desire to deface it with a marker...preferably something permanent.
But no, he could hardly do that, primarily as his case lacked markers of the functional kind (and here he paused to make a note in his diary about buying markers) but also because such conduct would be a poor use of his time.
Currently, he was using said time to track down a microwaveable meal in the campus' second and far less well-known vending machine. The unit itself was tucked away on the first floor, where only Janitorial or old hands like him would visit, on the few occasions when work was light.
And the interviewer, mentally clearing his schedule for the upcoming twenty minutes, was looking forward to a menu featuring at least an ounce of monosodium glutamate and carbohydrates. Perhaps after he'd 'inspected' the vending machine's products, he could take a look at the scene of the incident-and verify exactly what young Holloway had done to the security systems around the hall...not that there were many of them anymore.
It was the first block, really, that got the best equipment and actually had them updated, even if infrequently. A functioning camera for every hall, ever since he'd uncovered a few small rings of workplace thieves, which sent the ever-neurotic Board into a panic about employee screening and surveillance. In the end, they had the CCTV network set up and, while it seemed like an acceptable solution at the time, the electricity and staffing bills were now taking more out of the company pocket than the 'SETI OK crime ring' ever could.
Dummy cameras, the interviewer suggested at every yearly review meeting for the last five years, but the Board, just like everyone else here, was in denial, stringing out the oncoming collapse of this institute. He'd seen the figures for the last quarter, and their revenue only just stretched to cover salaries. And that included the rent they collected from the nearby Mendenhall Observatory, apparently the campus' most popular service on offer.
As he passes the Supply Hall and its' flickering lights, his predictions for the campus grew ever dimmer. The Very Large Array was almost out and already just as large in the public consciousness as the name suggested; here, they were no match for an operation of that scale and potential.
A decaying potted bamboo sits at the entrance to the hallway containing the vending machine. He gives it a pitying look and strides towards the foodstuffs, already salivating like Pavlov's dog.
Eight dollars and five minutes later, the investigator leans against the wall next to the vending machine and sups upon spaghetti in tomato sauce and its' single, hideously pale meatball. The back of the tin claims it's chicken, but his years of investigative experience tell him that this chicken tastes an awful lot like heavily-processed haddock. He fervently hopes that the pudding he saw behind the glass would not turn out to be jell-o coated with molasses and topped with a gumball masquerading as either a cherry or frosting.
It is only as he finally decides to try this Judas meatball that he hears it. A repetitive, mechanical wheeze, softer and layered with more little sounds than the printers here, accompanied by...wind? Indoors? At his hip, his transceiver starts to hiss. Subconsciously, he brandishes his plastic spork like the weapon it is not. Though he cannot be absolutely sure, the sound seems to be coming...
...from the other side of the vending machine, blocked from his view by four feet of metal and meals. He jams the lid onto his tinned pasta, shoves it into the distended pocket of his coat and prepares for confrontation, knowing that the vending machine is just as much camouflage for him as it is for the visitor.
The wheezing fades, and the interviewer's mind starts to race; in the melee, he sees an inexplicable light blue afterimage for a second before his body-seemingly of its' own accord-propels him towards the other side.
To his immense shock, he is met with a sixties-style police box, the light on its' roof activating itself as he comes to a halt in front of it. He spends goodness-knows-how-long staring dumbfound at the structure before remembering himself. Yes, if he were a lesser man, he'd call it a joke and leave it at that, but he is an investigator, and this police box somehow appeared or materialized in an empty hallway without visible human aid in the space of five minutes; ergo, a case in the makings.
Just to be sure of its' presence (and his own presence of mind) he gives it a quick poke with his spork. The prongs scrape against the surface rather than passing through its' form, an observation that provokes an involuntary gasp of surprise from the interviewer. Satisfied that the object was not a mirage or a hallucination brought on by the contents of that fish-ball, he dons his trusty gloves and begins to examine it in greater detail.
Scrutiny of the door reveals a plethora of pockmarks and scratches in the woodwork, as well as a penny-sized gouge into at least four layers of blue paint. A sticker bearing the logo of the St John Ambulance is adhered to the topmost panel on his left, and adjacent to it is a sign outlining what appears to be instructions for use. He foregoes reading the entire sign; that would be a waste of time that could be used to make-Oh, notes. He works his notebook out from his pocket, where it has been slightly crushed by that tin of spaghetti, and hastily scrawls out his recent observations.
The backlit windows give no insight whatsoever, their clinical white glow obscuring any sort of view when he tries to look through them. He gives it up soon enough, in part because as he peers through the opaque glass, he feels not so much a watcher as watched.
Stepping back, the interviewer twiddles his pencil ruminatively. The police box seems to be as much as the plaques bordering the roof say, but he cannot help but feel that there is much more to this box than its' mysterious appearance. He almost chuckled then, realizing that after all his years of championing logic and evidence over gut feelings, he should feel as if he were being observed by the police box he examines.
And yet that feeling never lets up. Somehow, it seems...aware of him. Not just his presence, but his very judgements regarding it. Or perhaps...
He takes another step back, and swiftly unclips the handheld radio transceiver from his belt, reciting his location, situation and a request for backup into the mouthpiece. He might have stammered on more than five of the words, but this time he doesn't care.
While he waits, he puts the spork away and elects to try the box's door-handle. Pull to open. He yanks at the handle and finds the door to be locked, lending merit to his first induction in this case. Suspicious, he finally presses his ear against the wood, hoping to pick up on something inside.
The wood is uncharacteristically warm against his skin, and has a grain to it that can be felt even through the coats of paint. And he can hear something: a continuous humming, like a motor was at work in there. Then he hears something he shouldn't, or he feels it, and it is inside his...mind, warm and undeniably living, calling up images of a space beyond the range of any telescope known to mankind, one that is impossibly familiar.
He tears himself away from the wood when the images start to make his heart race, and stumbles back, too discombobulated to pull out his spork again. What was that? he thinks (in his mind) as the...presence watches from the outside. Something is wrong with me. With all of this. It must be, if a little part of him still wants what happened earlier to happen again.
The interviewer scowls at his own irrationality, and puts another yard between himself and the police box. Hopefully, none of the cameras caught that.
"C...in, Intervi...er, it's Hol...and O'Sha..." comes a crackling voice, from somewhere near him.
Caught off guard, he jabs his 'weapon' at the box, before realizing the voices are those of his reinforcements. He takes up his transceiver again and tugs at the antenna.
The interviewer cleared his throat, and muttered his line to himself, praying that he didn't stumble over any of the words now. "Interviewer, reading. Message received, interv-ference present. What's your position?"
"Didn't...that. Signal must...bad where you a...We're a ...ute...way from...location." Yes, the voice could be identified as Holt's now, but the signal was still pretty poor here, even with the antenna extended to its' fullest. Maybe it was just the second block's old-fashioned infrastructure. Then again, he wouldn't put it past that police box to have interfered with the signal here.
It was a likely theory. The box was large enough to contain the kind of device needed to disrupt signals, and he did remember the signal being better here when he'd last used the device. Then again memory is fallible, after all. This building is much older than the other, and newer technology wasn't to be relied upon in the decaying halls.
Clattering footsteps, squeaks and a few huffs at the corridor's threshold mark the arrival of the security personnel, and the interviewer feels a responding wave of relief.
"Sorry for the delay, Sir! What's the situation?" Holt enquires, stopping at the vending machine and preemptively scanning the area.
Indicating at the offending object, the interviewer calmly states that an intruder had placed a police box here by unknown means within the space of five minutes.
Between wheezes, O'Shane squints in the direction the other man is pointing, clearly puzzled. "Wait, what'cha pointing at? What're we meant to be looking at?"
The interviewer's tone grows sharp with disbelief. "This police box. Here." He extends his hand to press against its' doors. "The one I'm touching."
Moving to stand next to the interviewer, the officers alternately peer and crane their necks to see.
"You don't appear to be touching anything, Sir. Erm...are you feeling okay? Did the intruder...drug you, or hit you on the head?" Holt frets.
"Maybe ya don't remember, 'cause the intruder came up behind ya and done it. Ya might feel a little weird, maybe see things that we don't. But dont'cha worry, sir, we'll run through these halls with a fine-tooth comb to find the fella."
"I assure you, I am perfectly sane. If this is your idea of a joke, it's not appreciated." At this, the two officers shake their heads frantically, and Holt chips in with a 'we never joke about calls, especially from you sir'. The interviewer maintains a frosty expression and continues, " Moreover, I dit-did not say the intruder was here; I never saw only the police box. I mean, I only saw the police box. You are welcome to affirm my claims and touch the box."
Holt's face scrunches up in confusion. "Nothing's there, though."
The interviewer lets out a frustrated huff, and uses his free hand to massage his temples. Here we go again!
"Hang on. The hell is a police box, anyhow?"
"Like a British telephone box, enclosed on every side allowing the person inside to make calls to the police without being observed. They were blue-the colour. The police boxes were blue. And also exclusively British," the interviewer explains, more to move things along than for the officer's benefit.
"Were?"
"Decommissioned in the 1969. By the eighties, most of them were off the streets," Holt clarifies.
They both turn to the space where the police box is supposed to be, and with an air of finality, the interviewer continues. "Now that we've established that I am mentally sound, I ask thuche-um, that you t-touch the box."
The pair exchange a look, before following the Interviewer's instruction. The interviewer watches their hands come up to rest near his, on the wood. And surprisingly, the two men do not seem surprised. Only perplexed, like before.
I don't feel nothing here, remarks O'Shane. And Holt agrees with him. Are you sure it's here?
The interviewer sees their hands next to his, on the blue wood. He feels the heat off their skin, and the pulsing warmth of the box, and its' layers of grainy paint through his thin linen gloves.
"Look. At your hands," he says, his voice sounding thin and aggravated, as if he were addressing a recalcitrant child. "Try to push them forward." They try, and their hands, as expected, do not pass through the solid doors. "Don't you feel resi'tance? Like a solid object is there?"
They shake their heads.
"You can't seel-see or feel the police box?"
Another no.
"So...you're both unaware of the police box, and only I'm aware of it?"
With that last negation, the interviewer shakes his own head, incredulous. "Well. Maybe I'm really not sane. Check the air, and maybe the tinned pisg-gips-this too," he finishes, handing his meal to O'Shane.
Giving his usual dismissive wave, he trudges away, feeling utterly wretched and more than a little betrayed, although by whom was unclear. The guards, for not believing him, despite all evidence to the contrary? The police box, for appearing only to him? No, that was illogical.
It was far easier to blame his own uncooperative mind. How he qualified for this job was beyond him, when he couldn't even convey his findings properly. Now with this invisible police box business, it seemed like he couldn't even find things properly.
(_Type 40 TARDIS_)