Mid-West Campaign
Session Sixty-Four

Wednesday, 23 May 2001

Jane and Alex arrive in the Wichita HQ at 9:00am. Jane broaches her theory that Eisenstein was killed by the brain bugs. After all they were attempting to dismantle Majestic. This means that the bugs could be coming after Artemis next. She is about to telephone Artemis when a man walks out of one of the dormitories. Jane immediately recognises him as the time travelling Alan Hamblin III!

This is the first time that Jane has met Hamblin, although Hamblin has evidently met Jane at some point in his past (her future). See case 0019-GCF for more information. Hamblin has travelled to the present from ten years in the future. From this Jane infers that they must have beaten the Brain Bugs somehow, to which Hamblin replies: "Err… sort of."

Hamblin is conscious that anything he says may contaminate the time line and prevent his future from taking place. However, he is not very circumspect and slips up with a couple of pieces of information. He asks Jane "how are the twins" (and he is not referring to Danni. As to his current role, Hamblin says that "… since Valerie's unfortunate accident, I am the premier asset of the entire operation. President Black said so." Jane is glad Josh is not present to hear this.

Hamblin says that the longer he stays with them the more likely he is to say something extremely stupid the condemns the continuum. He has come to give the team an ancient Sumerian scroll written in Sanskrit from 2000 BC. It is obvious that he nicked it. He says that it contains a vital clue, and a danger. He then heads off out of the door he came in. Jane and Alex quickly follow him.

But Hamblin has gone. Alex scans the dormitory and there is no sign of him. Unfortunately, there is also no sign of Jane.

[Editorial Note: Here we go again, folks! This is where Jane and Alex start messing around with time travel. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. You can see a travesty of this further abomination in the eyes of God in the newly updated Time Travel section: a section I hoped would never be updated. Once again, everything that follows in blue type never really happened, although this time the agents do have a written record.]

Jane feels a slight wobble, and she is alone. She emerges into a completely empty Wichita HQ. There is no sign of Alex Drake. All the computers have plastic over them. The legend on the office door says "Assistant Special Agent in Charge Joshua Blackthorne". She checks the secret filing cabinet and there is no way down to the Blackcave. Jane realises that she has been transported back in time by Hamblin's door. It is evidently some point prior to 26 September 2000. But when exactly? She could boot up a computer and check the date, but she doesn't want to disturb anything. Jane leaves the Wichita HQ and walks to the nearest gas station, about five miles away.

According to the local newspaper, the date is Wednesday, 26 July 2000. Jane sits down heavily and begins to comprehend the enormity of this. She is currently in Australia acclimatising before Olympic competition. Apache Joe is still at large. He won't take his thirty-fourth victim for another two months. Kirsty Faber is still alive. Nathan Harlow is still alive. Danni won't be pregnant yet. The things that Jane could do. The good that Jane could do. She understands the way time travel works (or as well as anyone could from Ecks's explanation). She knows that if she changes anything too radically the timeline will diverge. The future won't be her future any more. But she could create a future where her friends are still alive, where she isn't stuck in evidence response. She calls out to the archangels Gabe, Michael and Raphael that if they don't want her to do something stupid they should appear and take her back to her own time. Nothing happens.

Temptation has been placed in Jane's path and she cannot see a way forward. But the millstone of duty that Jane carries around her neck tells her that she has no choice. She doesn't know what will happen if she messes with the timeline, what costs there will be. She might save Kirsty, but what if someone else dies in her stead. She doesn't have the right to decide who lives and who dies. She goes to a payphone and telephones the Los Angeles public library. She asks to speak to Alan Hamblin III.

Unfortunately, this Alan Hamblin III has never heard of Jane. He is either no yet a time traveller, or not yet met Jane in his own personal past. If Hamblin can't help then who can?

Jane is disturbed by the sound of a Cadillac pulling up to the gas station. At the steering wheel is Alex Drake! A pre-evidence response Alex Drake. Drake has just finished an undercover assignment in which he infiltrated an organised crime family in Chicago. He is now on a road trip and is heading west (he has a foolproof disguise on his passenger seat: Panama hat, trenchcoat and set of dark glasses). He is alert to anything suspicious, so when he sees a six foot woman dive into a nearby bush at the sight of him and try to escape on her hands and knees commando style, he sees that something is up!

He jumps out of the car and runs after Jane. He calls for her to "Stop!". Jane knows that's she can't be caught, and can't let Drake see her. She runs for it around the building with Drake in hot pursuit. Not thinking clearly, Jane jumps into Drake's Cadillac and steals his car. She roars off down the road.

Drake leaps out into the flow of traffic to commandeer another vehicle and is scooped up like a hood ornament. He gets the car to stop, gets behind the wheel and slams the thing into reverse. He accelerates backwards into oncoming traffic. There is a terrible crash. Dozens of car crash into the back of him. One hits the gas station. There is an explosion.

Jane brakes violently and looks back at the scene of chaos behind her. She pulls on the hat and dark glasses and turns the car around to see if she can help. Meanwhile, Drake (although injured) is up and moving and has set up an effective triage on the side of the road. Jane is amazed. She has never seen him so competent! Miraculously no-one seems to have been killed in the chaos.

Drake sees Jane in his car and runs up to arrest her. Jane doesn't have time to turn the car around and starts rapidly reversing up the road. What has she done? Her actions caused this, she has already changed the timeline! She tries to turn around and accidentally hits Drake with the car. He is thrown down the road.

Jane rushes over to him. Fortunately he is not dead. She stabilises his wounds, puts him in the back of the car and drives at top speed toward the Wichita General Hospital. Unfortunately Drake wakes up en route and tries to wrestle the wheel from Jane. Jane crashes the car into a fire hydrant, she then leaps out of the vehicle, grabs the trenchcoat and runs off down the road with Drake in hot pursuit.

There is something about this Drake that completely flabbergasts Jane: he is good at what he does. It doesn't matter where she goes, he is still on her trail. He has all the tracking skills and instincts of a big game hunter. Jane runs up a fire escape: Drake is waiting for her on the roof. She jumps in a taxi: he has the number. She tries to hide in the sewers: Drake is already lurking in the gloom.

Drake and Jane confront one another in the sewers. Jane pretends to be Irish by inserting the word "Begorah" at the end of the every sentence. She is fooling no-one. She can hear the sounds of approaching policemen. Drake has called for back-up. She has no choice. She plants a kick on Drake, but he manages to block it! Is there nothing this Drake cannot do?

As the policemen close in, Jane has completely painted herself into a corner. She reveals that she is an FBI agent, and that there has been a misunderstanding. She appeals to Drake not to take this any further. She says that she knows him (or that she will know him). She tries to think of something personal she can tell Drake, but she realises that she knows absolutely nothing about him. She doesn't even know how he came to be in evidence response. Come to think of it… that big explosion at the gas station might have done the trick….

She asks Drake not to arrest her or check her badge just yet. She wants to talk and Drake suggests a near-by juice bar. After a quick stop at the hospital to attend to Drake's wounds the pair of agents are ensconced in a private booth. Jane starts to tell Drake everything: that she is an agent from the future and that he has to help get back to her own time. Everything Jane says is so completely unbelievable, and sounds like the plot from a bad science fiction movie. Drake is unconvinced.

In the end Jane gets Drake to telephone this time's Jane Munroe in Australia. Drake realises that there are two Jane Munroes in two different places. He begins to be won over. Jane realises that the Archangel Raphael is her only way out of this mess. According to the files, Raphael was still number two on the FBI most wanted list at this point in history. On 3 August, Raphael escaped a SWAT team who were hunting him at a shopping mall in Dallas, Texas. If they could go to Texas then they might find him.

Of course, Jane has been banned from Texas by Vitrano and Lavin. She'll need help getting there. She appeals to Alex to abandon his job and smuggle her into Texas. Drake is happy. Ever since he met Jane, his luck seems to have gone entirely sour. Jane has told him that he is going to be a member of evidence response. Basically, she is ruining his life. However, in the end he agrees.

Nine subjective days later it is 2 August 2000. Jane and Drake are in Dallas and Jane does indeed succeed in finding Raphael. As an entity able to move in the fourth dimension Raphael remembers talking to Jane in his future and he knows why she has come to him. "Can you get be out of this?" she asks him. He says that of course he can, but he won't. Not until Jane's work here is finished.

In the original timeline, Alex was pushed sideways into evidence response because a large amount of narcotics were planted on his car when he went away on holiday. They were planted by the criminal organisation that Drake was about to encounter on the case Jane interfered with. Jane hasn't killed anyone yet, so the timeline hasn't broken, but if she wants things to be completely unchanged she needs to further ruin Alex's career. The gas explosion wasn't quite enough. Alex doesn't like the sound of this at all. Jane rationalises that she is only putting things back the way they were, but to the Alex of this era they were never in that way in the first place!

Jane has an idea: surely if Alex let's Raphael escape from under the noses of SWAT tomorrow, that is bound to be enough to ruin him. Raphael agrees. Alex can't take any more of this and starts to get drunk on Raphael's fine conjured brandy. Jane is still in a tis about this whole enterprise. Part of her wants to stay and change the past. Raphael says that despite her lack of devotion to an organised religion Jane has a good heart, and she will make the right decisions. That is why Raphael likes her.

She remembers that when someone time travels something is displaced to the present (see case 0015-GCF). She fears for the present day Alex Drake and warns him of what will happen. Raphael says that although Drake will forget everything about Jane and his activities for the past week or so (a 'gift' from the Archangel) it will all come flooding back to him the instant Jane disappears to the past.

Jane uses the opportunity to question Raphael (he seems to enjoy). She tells him of her theory that the brain bugs killed Eisenstein. He says that this isn't true - although in hindsight, Jane believes that Raphael implied the brain bugs were culpable, but they just didn't do the deed themselves.

Raphael is apparently the third most powerful being walking the Earth. Michael is the most powerful. He doesn't say who number two is.

The scroll that Hamblin gave to Jane (and she is still holding) is actually the original document that the hieroglyphs recovered from Hamblin's home were copied from. Hamblin didn't know the mid-west team already had these, so he gave us the scroll. No-one has looked at these hieroglyphs for months. Raphael summons Alex Drake from the future so he and Jane can try and puzzle them out together.

In light of everything they learned from Raphael the last time they spoke, they are able to ascertain a few things. Part of the scroll refers to the Signai (not brain bug) prophecy of the return of Iesis. Raphael says that Benedict should definitely continue his studies of this scroll, as all manner of things can be determined. See Hamblin's Hieroglyphs in the evidence locker for the theories.

It is time to put the plan into operation. Raphael rolls on time to the 3 August. The Drake on this era finds himself shaking Raphael's hand, just SWAT officers appear from nearby windows and doorways. "Thank you, Alex!" declares Raphael and walks around a corner. SWAT can't find him. They confront Drake and the last thing Jane hears as she fades back to the present is Alex declaring his name and badge number.

It is once again 23 May 2001. Jane walks out of the dormitory to find Drake safe and sound. Memories, forgotten for eight months, bubble back in Drake's mind. "It was all your fault!" he declares. Drake explains that she only put the timeline back the way it should have been. Drake would have been in evidence response anyway. "You don't know that," says Drake. "The timeline has been changed. Your memories could have been changed. I might not have been here before you changed the past." Jane can't argue with that.

[Editorial note: although the events of 24 May 2001 cancel out the time-travelling related activities chronicled above, the following events did still take place in the repaired timeline. In this, true, timeline Jane was never transported back to the past. Following the encounter with Hamblin, the agents simply got on with their work.]

Jane throws herself into the continuing investigations before them. Firstly, she telephones Artemis to tell him what happened to Eisenstein. He isn't there and she leaves a message for him to phone back. She then finally closes case TL348 (which still hadn't been done). She decides to send the scroll Hamblin gave them to Justin Turn to see if he can translate it. She puts a trace on the current whereabouts of Mary Butler (which will take some considerable time). She then heads to the carpark to see if she can finally get any where near Peter Ellis Dean's car. She can't and so returns to the case in Fredericksburg.

Jane watches the video tape of the vault. Jane sees Senior Special Agent Brian Woods opens the vault at 12:45pm, check the contents with a clipboard and then leaves. According to Cole, Woods was out of the office all day on the eleventh and the items were discovered missing at 12:45pm. Jane initially suspects that this is the tape for the wrong day (even though it has the correct date stamp), however when a whole gaggle of agents arrive at 12:47pm, and are obviously agitated by a theft it is obvious that this is the right day. It doesn't explain Woods's presence in the building when he shouldn't have been there.

The agents have a lead, but are not sure what to do with it. Rather than following it up immediately, they decide to look into the history of the antique weapons first. This may seem to be clutching at straws, but it is what evidence response does best. They return to the museum in Fredericksburg.

They speak to the curator again, a man called Jack Armstrong. He says that there were two major battles in Fredericksburg - one where the confederates fought their way in, and one where they got kicked out. Most of the fighting was done around the major bridge and the hill. He says there is nothing exceptional about any of the fire-arms taken, but the stolen swords were works of art. He shows the agents pictures of the swords - they would have been very ornate at the time.

One sword was Captain Ethan Roscoe's cavalry sabre. It had a gilt hilt and ivory scroll-work. Roscoe was a confederate cavalryman and a cold-hearted bastard. He was a legend in his own time. He was renowned for pursuing black infantry regiments and seeing that they were wiped out to a man. He was a driven and brilliant tactician. The agents are shown a painting of the moustached Roscoe, discovered at a local farm house and painted by a man called Justin Redwood. Roscoe died at the second battle of Fredericksburg.

The second blade of note was a butcher's blade that many have belonged to unionist infantryman, Sergeant Gustav Reinheart. Reinheart was apparently a hero who kept the flag flying throughout the battle. He lost his blade at the second battle of Fredericksburg. There is a legend that Roscoe fought Reinheart on the hill to try and capture the flag, but Reinheart cut him down. The curator says that it might have happened, but there is no evidence to say either way.

Seeing this as point to start Jane and Drake obtain the longitude and latitude coordinates of where the blades were found and head up to the hill armed with a GPS device, a metal detector and a spade. Unfortunately neither of them can work the GPS properly, and Drake falls into a drainage sump and finds the sewer system. The agents give in when it starts to get dark and head to their motel.

Thursday, 24 May 2001

[Editorial note: Much of 24 May is replete with events subsequently cancelled out by Drake's trip through Hamblin's time door in the late afternoon. Again these events are displayed in blue type, whereas everything else really happened and is remembered by the agents. Please see the section on Time Travel for a further explanation of this.]

First thing in the morning they receive a call from Agent Reginald Warring from Inspection Division. They are researching the escape of Raphael from the north-east team just days before. They have noticed that (since Jane changed the timeline) Alex Drake was present at the escape of Raphael on two separate occasions. This is extremely suspicious. They want Drake and Jane come to Virgina immediately for interview.

"It doesn't look good for you Alex," says Jane conversationally. She contacts Turn and Jones of the north-east team to see what they said to inspection division. It is important they corroborate their stories before the interviews.

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