Dr Kathleen Bowe

Hello? Hello...? Can you hear me? Vital signs... No drooling? Sharp stabbing pain in your spleen? When you think of brains do you feel... ...primordially ravenous? Can I get a thumbs up?

Oh... Some difficulty with limb coordination, huh? Do you want to try again?

Well, who needs basic motor functions to get on in life? I'm sure you'll be just fine.

So much to tell, so little time. I am Dr Kathleen Bowe, Director of this facility. And you, I’m sorry to say, have been frozen... ...under the ice of Antarctica for nearly five years. I know, I know, it’s a lot to take in, but I want to assure you we have a wonderful benefits package... ...which will ease your transition to this new and exciting stage of-

...Oh! Uhm, don’t mind that. It does that. Let’s walk and talk. I should be able to access your comms...

...Are you still here? I guess the thawing process really stiffened those joints...

Wow. Still here... Are you sure you aren’t experiencing excessive drooling?

Is this thing working? Good, now if you could just make your way through our rehabilitation suite... ...we can run a full diagnostic test of all your motor functions and...

Oh... Quick as you like, thank you!

Honestly, you two were so deeply frozen I didn’t think you’d ever thaw. But look what positive thinking and cutting edge technology can do!

You'll need a couple of tools to help with this whole 'impending implosion' situation. Just pop over to R&D and we'll get cracking.

Now I know what you’re thinking. What about dental? As you can tell by your near-miraculous resurrection, our medical packages are second to none. But how about the hidden add-ons, the bonuses that make working with Norček the absolute most… Oh...

…also we have an experimental reactor which runs on the energy leeching through an inter-dimensional tear in reality and I really do think the whole thing might implode so if you don’t mind skipping the usual on-boarding protocols can we just jump straight to business? So unprofessional.

You may be wondering: "Where is everyone?" And let me assure you: Don't.

Do try the cake. It is divine.

Fantastic, you're nearly there. You should be able to see some prototypes Dr. Dahne was working on. They'll help you prevent our imminent atomisation.

Norček proprietary of course, but let's take the NDA as read, shall we?

Up ahead you will see Dr. Dahne's office, our former Head of Research. I'm afraid he's left some unauthorised security measures active. You'll need to disable those - and don't worry about the gerbil.

Dr. Dahne liked to work on his little side projects, including his so-wittily named 'shrink' and 'enlarge' machines. To answer your questions, yes, it does change the size of your atoms, no, you won't suffocate, and yes, everything stays physically in proportion to everything else - ...for better or for worse.

Fantastic! You recovered the prototypes. Now if you wouldn't mind just heading over to the transit station, we can get on with this little interdimensional crisis situation. Chop chop, do hurry along.

I know you have questions, but you know what we say at Norček: First we stop the quantum calamities, then we debrief on the project.

A few decades ago, a ‘rift’ was opened... by... ...well, we’re not entirely sure. You’ll have seen the giant tear in the sky. That central rift - 'Rift Zero', then created numerous other tears in the fabric of reality. Each one has unique, powerful properties and only a small percentage drive men mad to look on them, which is quite the win.

I'm going to send you round the back door, you can explore the hospitality suite next time.

So as mentioned: there is a teensy little tear in the reality of space and time at the heart of this facility. Until recently my staff were working on exploiting it for energy production on a world-changing scale. But there were a few health and safety oopsies and what can I say? The whole thing has become dangerously unstable... ...and that's where you come in!

Usually when we send people to repair a reactor burning with the power of seven suns, we try to give them a bit more training. But you two will do just fine.

There’s some things that have changed in the last five years that you won't know about. Long story short... A bug escaped into the world's oil fields, and it’s been turning fuel to mulch. Cue: global starvation and the collapse of the political order... ...but at Norček we believe that calamity is the mother of invention!

It really did seem like an excellent idea, you know, harnessing the energy of another universe through a tear in reality... Every great project has some teething issues.

Wonderful! I can see systems coming back online, I can see power spiking all across the board, so much power, so much glorious power...!

This is a pre-recorded message. Rift instability at 99%. Please back up any unsaved work and await vaporisation. Thank you.

Don't worry about the alarms. Health and safety made me record these dramatic little tidbits; Nothing to get worked up about. Happens all the time.

This is a pre-recorded message. Rift instability at 96%. Kindly finish any outstanding work and prepare for incineration. Thank you.

Incineration - vaporisation - I know these sound alarming, but you know what they say - gut-churning terror and giddy excitement feel really quite similar, when you get down to it.

Blast doors unlocked.

This is a pre-recorded message. Rift instability at 91%. Emergency personnel please report to supervisors. Thank you.

I can see the rift beginning to stabilise! There's nothing quite like having all your organs still intact to bolster productivity, is there?

Ah, the 'magnetic stabiliser'. You don't have any metal tooth fillings do you? Well, too late to wonder now.

That's done it! And with all your organs still on the inside too - gold star.

I can see the laser array is offline. Ah - you won't know what a 'laser' is. Imagine a light that can melt your brain. Isn't that fun? Let's turn it on.

You reactivated the Laser Array! Great work. I must remind you that your contract includes a waiver for injury arising from burns, blindness, disintegration and so forth, so stay safe, people.

I love health and safety, I really do - but they went a little overboard around here, I've made a note to raise it with any survivors.

Meg, it's Dr. Bowe. Just looking over your safety report, and I think you're worrying over nothing. Pop by my office sometime; let's have a little chat. Hi Meg, it's me again. Just a reminder that words like "armageddon" and "apocalypse" really do carry negative connotations. Happy to chat through some more appropriate language at your convenience. Meg, Meg! What the hell are you people playing at down there!? Hello? Hellooo? Meg, pick up the phone! PICK UP THE PHONE, DAMNIT!

Since energy production shut down we've been running on backup power and honestly it's been a nightmare! We’ve had dreadful staffing issues, no help has arrived - and some genius decided sanitation wasn't a vital system! What I'm saying is - if you can hold it, that might be best.

Welcome to the office of tomorrow! You should be able to find the control room, just think in five dimensional hyperbolic fractals and you'll be sorted in no time.

We consulted our top talent about the office redesign, and in the end everyone agreed that imaginative, playful spaces were more important than nausea control.

You should be approaching the heart of the machine. This whole facility is powered by something called a "computer". I know this is all desperately modern and new for you, so what I want you to imagine is a kind of "machine" that can do practically everything better than you. Isn’t that wonderful?

I can see the collectors are coming online. You really are exceeding my very low expectations! Simply manually reboot, and we won't all die! ...today.

Fantastic! The rift should be stable enough to attempt a facility restart! Don't worry about the lights and alarms and warning signs and all that. It'll be fine. Anyone can worry about a cataclysmic implosion, but it takes a visionary to say: "Meh, let's do it anyway".

Please forgive the mess. Janitorial have been on strike - and out here, you just cannot get the staff.

This is a pre-recorded message. Rift instability at 87%. All non-critical personnel please report to evacuation sites. This is not a drill.

Blast doors unsealed.

Would all personnel please report to R&D? That means you, you wonderful people, please!

[Bowe] I know this is hard, but I need you to focus. What happened to Lewis and Sen? [Murray] It- It was dark. And there was something out there. I could hear it clicking - like bone on bone. And there was some meaning to it, a pattern. I didn’t understand. [Bowe] Yes- Okay, okay... Murray! Did you complete the test!? [Murray] We were prepping the theta splice for stabilisation. It was hard to get readings, the soil, the plants - roots grew every time we activated the machine, like iron drawn to a magnet, leaves crackling with sparks. We thought we were safe beneath the forest canopy, but our radiation badges went off, and we realised the light we were seeing by wasn’t coming from the stars... [Bowe] Where is the splice now? Did you activate it? [Murray] There's something out there. It went from nothing to vast in the blink of an eye! I’m not ashamed of running. Maybe if the others had run, they’d be here too...

While you two were out I took the opportunity to upgrade your tools. Technology is so much more reliable than people, don't you think?

So, forty years in the ice - you must have questions. Let me answer the most pressing - everyone you know and love is probably dead, but I promise you - I promise - I will help you fill backpay requests for the time you spent frozen like the old-timey popsicles you are. No compensation claim unexamined, that is the Norček promise.

Or - and hear me out - how would you feel about a tiny bit of time travel? Yes yes, I know, time travel, it’s a disaster, causality yadda yadda, but if it's sending you back to your past just after you fell into the ice or... ...or filling out form QB-141-B, I know which one I'd choose! Just pop over to the transit station, and we can see about getting you home.

So sorry I wasn't there when you woke! We had a power surge - you felt it, knocked you clean out, you poor things! And I had to do... uhm... a thing... Dreadfully manual, usually have people for this, but you know what they say - there's no 'i' in team! But there is an - aaaaahhh [chuckles] am I right? Oh I make myself laugh...

…What? Why aren’t we celebrating? Doing the little… You know…

I don’t want to tell you your feelings, but your energy seems off. Here we try to promote positivity no matter what perils may befall and...

We’re still not moving, are we? I would have thought after forty years frozen under ice, you’d be bored of staying still.

Now I don't want you to get over-excited, you wonderful icebergs you, but there are rifts at the temporal laboratory that cut through time itself. Stabilise one of those and you could pop back to your own time! Tadaa! And while helping yourselves, you could perhaps fix a few teensy little problems for me too. Just as part of your process, of course.

I spent a lot of time at the Temporal Laboratory... ...before a workforce issue forced me to reprioritise my efforts. It will be wonderful to get the systems running again.

Everyone was dreadfully anxious when we discovered the possibility of time travel. What if I murder my grandfather? Worse, what if I kiss him!? The memos - you wouldn't believe.

I know how dangerous time travel is, really I do. But I have a mission to complete, and as they say - foresight is better than hindsight.

You made it! All you need do is restore power to the main hall, reboot the Chroniton Inverter, and you can be back home and off my payroll for good! If on the way you happen to lift the lockdown on Rift Seven, that would be wonderful.

Inside the laboratory you might encounter temporal instabilities that allow you to glimpse through time itself. Wonderful for long-term planning, bit of an challenge to the concept of free will. Some of my staff were a little over-wrought about these issues and shut the lab down. I blame myself - a manager should always be two steps ahead.

[angry grunts] Graaaargh! [yells] [strained breaths] Right. Right. Right right right. Nothing to worry about. It’s just, uh, it's uh- it's uh- ...a little staff sabotage. That’s all. We can fix this. I say we. I mean you. You can fix this. Then you can go home, and I... I can just carry on. Easy. Just find a time crystal, and off we go!

I see Rodriguez has put up another irritating little roadblock. Do you know she received her first doctorate at 17... ...but couldn't spell 'mitochondrial encephalopathy'? Geniuses - not as smart as they think.

Fantastic progress, team - I can see the crystal is in place! Few alarms going off re-encroaching temporal calamities, but one problem at a time.

So I just saw a massive temporal event on my monitor... ...implying that one of you has been... displaced...? ...through time? I do hope they survived the liquefaction stage... ...what a breakthrough that would be.

Now I would never tell an employee to risk being torn down to quantum bits and spaghettified through a rift in time itself... but if you both touched the same tear in reality at the same time, I feel like it could yield some interesting... ...maybe even productive results.

The head of temporal research imposed a lockdown on this area - quite against my wishes! "Director, you're playing with causality... We weren't meant to know the future!" "Kathleen you're going to kill us all!" - and so on.

This whole facility is run via the 'time crystal'. Fascinating thing - it keeps trying to return to the vault. I believe that it will be placed there at some point in the future, and it's simply arriving early. Either way, to the vault you go!

The vault won't be easy to access. Rodriguez wanted to lock the keycard behind a security system of such fiendish complexity... ...that only the most brilliant mind could crack - [radio distorts]

[radio distorts] ...which is why I revoked her clearances, thus rendering the card inoperable. So much for smarts.

Have you noticed that you two work better... ...in entirely different timelines from each other? Makes you think.

Are you finding that your tools still work effectively in the past? Just curious. Makes you think about how much history you could change with a simple bag of explosives.

Archaeology were so petty about their work. I understand the value of history, I really do, but... ...sometimes you've got to accept that progress needs dynamite.

Lapis temporus - 'the temporal crystal' - ...has the unique property of having both never existed, and also existing at all possible points in time. It was not here, and then it was, and once it was, it had always been. I try not to think too hard about these things - no point troubling oneself over details.

Leaving aside the mind-blowing monetization opportunities of time travel... ...I can imagine that being in two different timelines might be helpful in handling the time crystal.

Ah, you've entered the domain of Dr. Murray, our chief botanist. Fantastically tedious man, obsessed with extracting energy from his 'otherworldly' plants. Insisted on hiding his 'special' seeds in the area around his office... ...as if anything he made here belonged to him.

I see you've found Dr. Murray's "battery bulb". Delightful creation, could power a factory for a year, tastes faintly of sardines. Also it takes years to grow a single one. I did try to remind Murray that we're in a literal temporal facility, but he said that would be cheating.

That's it - the "battery bulb". We really do need to run the name by marketing... ...pop it in the machine and you should be good to go!

I'm seeing a few warning messages over here. Something about emerging catastrophic paradoxes? I wouldn't worry about it. After all, if it was going to happen, it already would have that's the wonderful thing about time travel!

I don't want to tell you your job, but those 'temporal paradox' paradox' alarms are getting quite insistent... So if you could wrap things up that would be fantastic.

Can you hear me? I said can you hear me!? Good. This is notice that Norček will be pursuing you for damages to property, corporate espionage! We’ll see you in court! You were meant to secure the laboratory, not blow it up! Say goodbye to your end of year bonus, say goodbye - to a corner office, it’s the nook next to the toilets for you - and janitorial have been on strike since 1972! You idiots! This is what happens when you use clones!

What? You think you survived in the ice for forty years? Ha! What is it with people like you just walking into Antarctic death traps anyway? You’re clones - and as such you are officially property of Norček Industries. You’re not people, you’re project capital, and I’m gonna get the most out of you, even if you are a pair of idiots!

Okay, I need you to grab your gear and get to the transit station, because Rift Zero is destabilising, and when it does it will kill us all. I won’t be bringing you back again. This isn't a "whoops it must be Tuesday" kill - this is a everything in a five thousand mile radius kill... and you are the only ones - god this is awful - the only ones who can fix it. Let's go!

Oh, not moving, hm? That's fine. That is fine. Let's just all stand here and die. Pfft. I always knew I'd be killed by the incompetence of others.

Oh, that sounded like a fracture in reality tearing through the structure of the building. So much for the pension plan.

Got your upgraded gear? I say that, though I only gave the least incompetent one of you an upgrade. Tested it? Happy? Great - let's go.

Goodness me, this is why I never deal with interns... Gear! Transit station! Imminent death! GO!

So whatever you did in the temporal research center has messed up everything, including the central rift - so here’s what you're going to do. You’re going to go inside Rift Zero, and you’re going to stabilise it once and for all and save our lives. And in exchange; A) We won't be dead. And B) I will waive Norček's legal ownership of your biological matter and release you from your professional obligations. Obviously the paperwork will be immense - but I’m willing to give it a try. For you. For the world.

Rift Zero is connected to all the other rifts - if it closes we lose everything we've worked for here. Previous expeditions have travelled through to try and stabilise it. Don't think about what happened to them - what matters is that you are going to finish the project!

Listen, all we've ever tried to do, it is to help. To fix the energy crisis, make this world a better place, and... you may not like my management style, but I'm sure you can agree that the aim justifies the means. Oh, and also, on the other side, do keep an eye out for giant carnivorous...

Can you hear me? This thing seems to be broadcasting... Are you there? I don't know how much longer we have until the rift destabilises.

I don't know if you can hear me. I don't know if anyone can. Whatever you’ve seen, whatever you've heard, we did it for Earth. People dying. Starving. We did it to save them, to give them a future, to save you.

I can see it! It's starting to stabilise! You beautiful mushed-brained clones, you did it! Just a little bit more!

It's stabilising, I did it! I mean, you were there too, I suppose - I've saved the whole flipping world!

No - stop! It's not too late. It's not too late to turn back. The suffering, people are dying here, the whole world, YOUR world… Your world is dying!

Lockdown suspended.

Rift 7, 'the temporal rift' has the unique property of having both never existed, and also existing at all possible points in time! It was not here, and then it was, and once it was, it had always been. I try not to think too hard about these things no point troubling oneself over details.

What? Wha- [scoff] Why isn’t this working? What's happened here? That is not…