Foston Slacks - Good's Intentions

25

It was Foston's fault. He had told everybody the plan in minute detail, several times, before they had even started setting up the equipment, but his choice of words could, perhaps, have been more specific and less misleading. The created Breach had become captured, however, and now it hovered within the cage of light, looking sullen. If Breaches could do anything other than be wobbly, wavering nothings in the air.

Effort, of course, had taken Foston's words literally. So literally, in fact, that she had jumped forward, arms outstretched, with an excited 'aha!'. Only, her jump had caused her to land right in front of the Breach and her next movement, stepping forward to grab the shimmering portal, had constituted an actual step to use the Breach and she had simply disappeared.

"That could have gone far more disastrously, I think." Foston now circled the Breach, taking readings with his watch and looking far too self-satisfied, considering one of their number had disappeared to who-knew-where. "Now the easy part is over and done with, we need to take this somewhere a little less conspicuous."

"And Effort? Has she fulfilled her part of the proceedings?" Clara didn't like seeing the Breach caged like this. It reminded her of the dying one they had found on the pleasure space station, even though this Breach was not a real one.

"Oh, she'll find her way back." With a rub of his nose and a little sniff, Foston gave a little shrug. "She'll never stop trying, at least. Effort is nothing, if not persistent."

With a couple of tweaks on his equipment, Foston looked back towards the Breach through a haze of steam and crackling electricity. It looked like the machinery were all about to explode and, as he continued to adjust things, the machinery began to make pained noises accompanying an increase in shuddering.

Time stepped back a little and Clara followed his example, leaving only Foston near the equipment. The noises and shuddering continued to rise and Clara readied herself to push Time in front of her. She didn't know if it would save her, should the machinery explode, but at least the last thing she would see was Time's stupid face as he took the brunt of it.

With a pop and a hiss, the machinery stopped its howling and shuddering. Time's crystal ball machine glowed so bright it pained Clara's eyes and then the Breach became sucked into the ball, the cage of light that had held it faded away and only Effort's little matchstick device remained active, its light blinking a soft green colour.

"Is that it? I never doubted you." Stepping out from behind Time, she pointed towards the manifestation of a multiversal constant. "I think Time soiled himself, though."

"I did not!" He rounded on her, hands balling into fists. Even the hands on his cartoon clock face looked about ready to start a brawl.

"Oh, so you always smell like that." Clara moved away from Time, wafting a hand beneath her nose and leaning in to look at the crystal ball. "Bit disgusting."

Inside Time's crystal ball, Clara could see an indistinct image of a Breach. It raced about, bouncing against the inside of the ball, captured and unable to escape. Clara almost felt sorry for it. Then she remembered that this thing had come here to capture her and she felt a little less caring toward it. A lot less, in fact.

The next part of the plan involved taking the Breach somewhere far away. Somewhere where the entity that had sent the Breach could not possibly hope to find them. Somewhere so cleverly mundane and inoffensive that, even if the thought did come to the entity, they would dismiss it as a idea of such monumental foolishness, they would snort and laugh at themselves.

Somewhere like Bicester.

Before all that could happen, Foston needed to put away all his equipment. With a tap on his watch, he held it up to his ear. He spoke into watch, looked at the watch face, spoke into it again and nodded. He reached into his pocket, pulling out what looked like a model of their escape pod spaceship.

It disappeared from his hand and Foston gazed up into the sky. With a strange buzzing sound, all the machinery and equipment glowed a bright blue and then vanished. A few seconds later, Foston held out his hand and the model of the USS Astrophobia reappeared upon his palm, which he returned to his pocket. He glanced around to Time and Clara.

"Half-ne has been wanting more responsibility for years." He began to whistle as he picked up Time's crystal ball. "Though, I doubt she'll put everything away where it should be. She is, after all, a disembodied robot hand."

With a shake of her head, Clara picked up Effort's matchstick device, tucking it into her dungarees pocket. No-one in the surrounding vicinity had appeared to notice anything strange, a consequence of a low-level telepathic prod by Foston's watch. That kind of thing never ceased to amaze Clara. No matter what idiotic, bizarre or wildly dangerous thing Foston did, no-one ever noticed.

"We have the Breach, you've stolen my technology to do it and you've lost a manifestation of a metaphorical concept." For once, Time had remained silent for more than a few seconds. "Can I go now?"

"What? Go? We're just about to get to the good part!" With Time's crystal ball under his arm, Foston tapped upon his watch and a Breach appeared. A real one. "Analysis."

With great reluctance, Clara and Time followed Foston through the Breach and they found themselves in a what looked like a quarry in Wales. Surrounded by hills of grey dirt, Clara wondered where, exactly, they had ended up. She had visions of cheaply made BBC science fiction programs running through her head.

Silly looking monsters made from rubber, styrofoam and bubble wrap, painted by badly paid assistants wishing they were anywhere else but in a dull, grey quarry somewhere in the deepest darkest regions of the countryside. She had seen real creatures that people would call 'monsters'. Some of them had great senses of humour.

"Where are we now?" She looked around but everything seemed grey and featureless without anything to signify whether they were near civilisation or not. "Some planet on the outer regions of space? An alternate Earth where all life has become extinct? Have we gone back in time, to some primordial era?"

"In Wales. A quarry just outside Rhyl." Foston sat down upon the damp dirt and placed Time's crystal ball on the ground before him. "Clara, if you could sit right across from me. Right there."

"Do I have to? It looks damp and dirty and, well, these dungarees soak up water very easily." She threw up her arms as Foston scowled and pointed to the ground on the other side of the crystal ball. "Alright, keep your fur on."

"And you, Time. If you could sit on this side?" Foston patted the dirt to his left.

Time grumbled even as he moved to sit between Foston and Clara. His cartoon eyes made those horizontal 'V' shapes with the extra line as his backside squelched into a puddle. Clara had seen this and had still not sat down. She wanted to wait until it was absolutely necessary and, no matter how much Foston scowled at her, she wasn't about to consider 'now' as absolutely necessary.

"So, I'm sat. I'm wet and miserable, but I'm sat. What now?" Time wobbled from side-to-side, grimacing as the puddle squelched beneath him. "You know I'm Time, right? You have one of the primary constants sat in a puddle in a quarry in Wales. This is the least dignified thing I've ever done."

"I can think of something else that was far less dignified." Clara made a deliberate glance towards Time's crotch and tried, badly, to cover her wicked smile.

Time jumped up, his face a picture of fury, but Foston dragged him back down to the dirty ground. The look Foston gave Clara told her, in no uncertain terms, that she should stop annoying the manifestation of a multiversal constant, buck up her ideas and bloody well sit down. She still hesitated to sit.

"We're just waiting for our last component to arrive." Foston turned his head to the side, as though expecting someone to arrive. When they didn't, he glanced at his watch. "We're just waiting for our last component to arrive!"

To the other side, in the opposite direction from where Foston expected, Effort jumped through a Breach, almost tumbling over Time, catching herself by supporting herself on Time's clock head and then grinned at everybody, before dropping down immediately to the right of Foston.

"Sorry I'm late. You wouldn't believe where I've just been! A planet full of Claras! No lie! Millions of them!" Effort puffed out her cheeks and shook her head. "It took me thirty-five years before I realised not one of them was the real one, and I checked every one thoroughly. Anyway! Let's do this!"

With them all in place, it was time to finally get some answers.