It's All a Facade - Ian(22)

The Girls immediately decided they were going with Ellen in "Sally," which left me with Marcus. Greg offered to come to, to "enjoy Marcus's warm company with me"(smirk). Greg and I walked through the door and headed towards Marcus's imposing black... car. I'm usually very good with identifying cars, but this time I had no idea. It didn't look weird, I just couldn't put my finger on a model or a year. And there didn't seem to be one written anywhere.
"You want shotgun?" asked Greg, "Cause I've had just about enough of that seat,"
"Uh... sure," I answered. I opened the door and climbed in. The interior was all in black leather. As I glanced over at the dashboard display, there was something slightly unusual about it, but again I couldn't pinpoint just what it was.
"What kinda car is this?" I asked.
"That's complicated," said Greg. "Recruiters aren't allowed to have anything that might influence a possible recruit, hence all the black. Some people feel very strongly about certain kinds of cars. At the same time, a totally unique car draws a lot of attention to itself, and attention is the last thing we want. This was the solution."
"What was?" I asked, confused.
"The Facade," answered Marcus. "They're standard issue for recruiters, although Ellen chose to use her own car instead. It uses future technology similar to that used in the room you found yourself trapped in,"
"When most people see it," said Greg, "It looks like whatever they expect to see,"
"And you two have know idea how it works, of course," I said cynically.
"Even speculating on the inner workings of future technology is strictly prohibited," qouted Marcus.
"It could lead to you inventing it, which would cause a paradox," explained Greg. "I don't understand it either. Apparently it's one of the conditions under which we're allowed to - what the hell?"
"What?" I asked, looking around. Outside the window, Ellen was standing outside her Mustang talking to a man I'd never seen before.
"Is that the other recruit?" I asked
"I severely hope not," said Greg, as he fished in his pockets for something, "Marcus, tell me that's not who I think it is?"
"I wouldn't know," he answered.
As the car pulled out of the parking lot, Greg leaned out the window for a closer look.
"It's Virgil," he said. "Looks like the gang's all here,"

Revealing Exposition-Virgil(22)

Click. Wait. Where are they... click click. MY KEY! Crap. All that work to stay hidden, and I'm defeated by this, of all things. Epecially ironic that I should name it "Facade." Well, I guess it had to happen sooner or later. With this interesting group, it's probably the best time. New crew starting up and the old crew reunited. It's particularly amusing in Greg's case. I wonder how they'll react to the third member of the old crew suddenly reappearing, me being officially dead and all.
I approached Ellen with absolutely not stealth for the first time in years. She turned; I could see her mind working, trying to remember where she'd seen me before. A look of realization crawled across her face, followed by a strange combination of terror, relief, and general confusion.
"Hello, Ellen. Could you help me out? I've locked my car keys inside the Facade."

Exposition - Ellen (21)

I hadn't practiced the script in front of a mirror. I hadn't needed to. I knew all about what we were doing, knew way more about it than these recruits did, and I knew exactly how serious it was. This part was not a game. To pretend it was one could be fatal.
Then I was rudely interrupted in the middle of my speech, and... well, maybe Scarlett got on my nerves a little too much, or maybe something about Ian sitting there trying to be brave got to me, or maybe Gillian just looked like she was actually thinking about what I said. Or maybe it was Greg. But I broke with the script.
It was a stupid thing to do. I would probably get in trouble for it. But I felt it was the right thing.
I wanted Gillian, Ian, and even Scarlett to know exactly what they were getting into. You're not supposed to want that. A recruiter is supposed to stick to the script. I certainly hadn't known it all when I signed that paper seven years ago. I don't know if it would have made it any better if I had. And it's impossible to know everything, anyway. But I did tell them the truth. I'm not sorry that I did that.
I didn't look at Greg's face. I imagine he was pretty surprised.
It didn't occur to me immediately that there was a reason for the script. Now I know. It's because with too much information, the questions might never end. Ian was the first.
"So... how does it work?"
"Seriously?" Well, I'd already left the script in the dust. What the hell. "I don't have any idea. We get this stuff from... later on."
"From the future, you mean." Ian again.
"Basically, yes."
Scarlett and Gillian raised their hands, like it was a press conference. This was the moment when I began to fear for my job, and Greg must have seen that look on my face, because he stepped in.
"You guys want to know the whole story?" he asked them, sitting coolly in his chair. "You're not going to get it. And Ellen can't answer any more of your questions, really, because if she does she'll get fired." He stood up. "But I'm going to tell you a little bit." The recruiters in the corners stepped toward him uncertainly, but he waved them back. "You see, I've been a part of this agency for seven years, but right now, they can't fire me. I'm just a recruit." At this point all I was thinking was Ohshitohshitohshit, what is he doing? On top of everything else, I didn't want Greg to suffer for my indiscretions. "The agency was founded way off at some point in the future when people started noticing the influence of other universes on our own. And at some point somebody realized that the only reason they hadn't been noticed before then was that someone had made it possible to... well, that someone had created an agency that..." Greg, despite whatever his intentions were, was running out of words. "An agency that did... what we do. This agency. So they went back and built it."
"So... this agency was created when someone realized that this agency had been created?" Gillian asked.
"Pretty much." Greg shrugged.
"So... what do we actually do?" Scarlett asked. "You haven't said what we're going to do."
"And why us?" Ian added.
Greg was about to answer, but I couldn't let him. This was my question to answer. There is a second script, for when somebody eventually realizes that the first script never answered those two questions. It always happens eventually, though usually not this soon. Seven years ago I was the one who asked it, on the second night of the mission. I was twenty-four years old then. This is what Jimmy answered, and what I said now:
"What do we do? We are guards. We patrol the edges of what we know. We push back the invaders. We keep the world we know safe from the worlds we don't. What we really do is, we make sure things happen. And not just any things. The right things. The things that have happened. At every major historical event, some of our agency have been there. At a lot of seemingly mundane events, too. We are just out of sight. We cause ripples. Little ripples that spread and shape our world. A job could be as simple as dropping a rock in the middle of the road, but it is that rock which will cause the horse to fall and kill the messenger who would have started the war. Or stopped it. We go back. Never forward, not unless it's absolutely necessary. We must always keep in mind what happened to those other worlds. But we know we can go back because we have already gone. We make sure things continue to have happened in the way that they have happened. And sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it's not easy. Sometimes we have to fight. There are those who want us to fail. But it's a job we have to do. We cannot change it. We are not seen. We are not rewarded. But we are the people who save the world every day." I paused. This time, it was just the right length of pause. No one spoke. I could see Greg was remembering, now, the night we'd heard all this. It had been too late to turn back, then. As if we could ever have turned back. "And why you? Because we need you, and you need us. You have what we need to do what we're doing, and once you've done it, you'll realize... what you should be doing from now on." I glanced at Greg. "That's the hope, anyway. The agency's been known to bungle things up occasionally." Now I looked at all of them. The script had ended two sentences ago, but I felt inclined to add just a bit more. "So. This is your last chance to back out. Really your last chance. I know you've already signed the papers, but I could very easily just tear them up and nobody'd be the wiser. Except, the thing is... you're not going to back out. Are you?" Nobody answered. "You see? We're very careful about the people we choose. So. Watch your backs and we might all get through this."
That was what I said. What I was thinking was, if you knew what I know... If you knew what I just heard about the other recruit... you would have had me tear these to shreds in a second. Because the other recruit was missing. And that was very, very worrying.
Maybe that's the reason recruiters have a script. If we told the recruits everything, there would be no recruits.
But Greg did know everything, I suddenly realized. So why was he still here?
No time to think about Greg's weirdness now. More talking to the recruits.
"The first thing we're doing is fairly easy. We're traveling in space, not time." I noticed Scarlett opening her mouth. "No, not outer space. Space as in geography." Scarlett shut her mouth. "Ladies and gentlemen, we're going abroad. So if you'll just follow me..." I stood, and they did follow me. At the door, I remembered.
"Oh! Code phrase." I smacked myself on the head, which I'm sure looked really impressive. "If you're ever unsure as to who is a friend and who is a foe, and you will be, just ask, 'What falls in the shadows?' The answer we're looking for is, 'Society's pants.' Just remember that. Society's pants." I giggled. "Clever, yes?" I proceeded out the door and onto Dunhill, stopping at my Mustang. "This is Sally. Two of you will be lucky enough to ride in her with me. The other two will go with Marcus. We meet at the airport in thirty minutes."

The Big Reveal -Greg 20

So I sat in my chair and watched it all happen like it always does. They signed the papers eventually, everyone does. After maybe six minutes of awkward silence (and you know how I hate awkward silence) Ian got up, and Scarlett immediately followed. They signed and sat down.
"Alright," Ellen began, and my mind floated back to a scene so different and so much the same, so many years ago.
It was another room like this one, and a man was talking to us. Later we'd come to know him as Jimmy, but for now he was just the recruiter. We didn't have a Scarlett. We didn't do names. He gave us the backing out talk and we signed. I'd signed because I was studying political science at Yale to be like my daddy, except that I hated politics with a passion. Wasn't too crazy about old dad either. And I was thinking, here's a chance to get out of it; be a real American hero.
Anyway, we signed, and old Jimmy said just what Ellen was saying.
"Alright," He-She said, it all blurred together, "You know that you're here for a mission, and you all have other reasons you're really here, but you don't know what this is all about. I really wish this was the big reveal, and I could tell you all the secrets, but it doesn't work that way. I'm afraid I'm just going to make more questions for you, but one thing at a time.
"And speaking of time, the first thing you're going to have to wrap your heads around is time travel. It's possible; It happens; It complicates things. Hopefully we won't have to send you through time, but it's possible.
"You see, everything's possible. It's a long held theory that for anything that could have happened, there is a universe in which it did. It was only recently discovered that one can actually travel between them. And because one can, one does. Of course, we don't. Research has been done in societies far more advanced then ours that concludes that overuse of this technology will collapse the universe from which it stems. The infinite universes that already exist are one thing, but when they interact with each other, they increase exponentially. Infinity squared may be too much for the world to handle."
That was a dramatic pause for old Jimmy, but perhaps Ellen held it out too long, or perhaps it was just the new group. Anyway, Scarlett cut in.
"This is a pretty far-fetched story," she said, "but even if it's true, if 'we' don't travel to other universes, why are we here?"
"Well," said Ellen, "I lied. It's a script, designed to reveal the information in the easiest possible way for you."
I couldn't believe it. She told them she was scripted. And she stopped following it, too.
"The fact is we do use it, but only to undo the damage caused by those from other universes. We protect our universe from collapse, and we keep the population from learning about it."
And this time it was Gillian who cut in. She'd been deep in thought for a while, but it appeared to have sunken in, because she asked the question.
"Why? There could be, and, I guess, must be universes where cancer is cured or electric cars work better than gas. We could learn all this stuff."
"We've been warned against it. It's destroyed universes before. This isn't some strange new world to be explored, like space or a new continent. This is the world of could have been, and it's a dangerous, dangerous place."
And that was straight out of the script.