Jason Low
presents
a Project HEARD "Gold Digger" fanfic

When Destinies Collide

MONDAY 24 NOVEMBER 1997 00h04MST
NEAR BRAGG CREEK, ALBERTA, CANADA

 Jason put his foot closer to the floor of the car. In response, the machine
surged forward a few more kilometers an hour. He was tired, and wanted to get
home sooner rather than later; that, and the fact that he knew the police would
be scarce at this time of night, contributed to his going--glance--one hundred
and twenty-nine kilometers an hour in a 100 zone.
 After spending the previous night up watching a bunch of movies, he had
foolishly tried to function with only three-and-a-half hours' sleep, working
from six-thirty AM to two-thirty PM. Then, also foolishly, he'd chosen to stay
out for the remainder of the afternoon/evening and watch Starship Troopers in a
local movie house. Which is how he came to be driving after having been up for
20 hours, and having his mind addled by a tremendous amount of science fiction
in the past two days.
 He had his car's stereo on. It (the car) was nicknamed The Nightmare Machine,
to correspond to a line in one of his favorite Def Leppard tunes. That, and the
car was indeed a nightmare, considering what all he'd done to it, adding lights
and antennae and other weird bits, helping him perform his "other" job as a
volunteer firefighter.
 In any case, on the stereo, which was permanently tuned to the local rock
station (by choice and by necessity, since the light behind the digital dial
had burned out), was a radio program called Headphones Only, whose real purpose
was to give the DJ up to 70 minutes of break time while a CD played in its
entirety. The name of the particular CD that was being played early this Monday
in question has, in fact, been forgotten, and is not important in any case.
 The fact that the radio crackled and fizzed for almost ten seconds when Jason
stopped at the intersection of Highways 8 and 22, very close to his home,
however, is.
 Jay's first thought was that the half-burned-out alternator had finally packed
it in. When he realized that his lights and other electric services were still
working, he looked at the radio. Then he realized that the radio scanner, which
he had wedged between the front seats, was also emitting a huge amount of
static, it finally caught his full, undivided attention.
 Unfortunately, that also meant that the car, which wasn't used to not being
babied through stop signs, stalled.
 He was about to try to restart it when a bright ball of light streaked
overhead, from his six-o'clock position to just about eleven-o'clock or ten-
thirty or so. He stared open-mouthed at it, watching it plow into the nearby
field to the northwest of the highway.
 He got the car to start after whatever aircraft had crashed, and while driving
to the scene, dialed 911 into his cell phone. He told the dispatcher, who he
knew well, to get his own department, an ambulance or two, and the police
rolling.
 When he arrived at the scene, he blinked a couple of times. There was no
aircraft visible, and the only remaining spot fires were just little bits of
vegetation aflame here and there.
 Lying face-down on the ground was a young lady.
 Without hesitation, he rushed to her, wondering where her vessel had gone. His
mind flashed back to the video footage he'd seen a few months back of a stolen
Corvette crashing and disintegrating, the driver sliding fifty feet away on his
behind. <Maybe the same kind of thing happened here,> he said to himself.
 By this time, he'd checked her airway, breathing, and circulation, and
confirmed that if she wasn't conscious, at least she was alive. He began a
primary survey, as he was trained to do in his EMT course, but had to stop when
he noticed something.
 Her ears weren't like any normal person's ears. Instead, where one would
expect to find normal-looking ears, Jason found strange, almost catlike ones.
 He stared for a moment, puzzled. His eyes drifted down along the girl's head,
to her face, and he blinked again.
 On the left side of the girl's face, from her eyebrow vertically down over her
left eyelid, almost touching the corner of her mouth, was a black stripe of
some sort.
 As if noticing her for the first time, Jay leaned back a bit and sized the
prone figure up. Standing, he surmised, she'd be about six-ten in height.
 <Is it HER?> he wondered.
 By then, the members of his department arrived. He waved them in, realizing he
was going to have to make up some story to explain how an aircraft crash would
leave no marks other than a couple of burning patches of grass and one single
solitary girl, and a fictional one at that.
 By the time the medics got to his location, he'd figured it out, and told them
he'd seen a car crash of some sort, thinking it was a plane crash. The car had
left the scene; no, he didn't see what make it was, but it couldn't have gotten
very far, inasmuch as some of its fluids were in the ditch over there. (At
least that part was true; at the point of impact, there were several pools
which corresponded to most of the major fluids one might find in a vehicle.)
 <But where did the vehicle go? And is it because I've been up way too long, or
am I really seeing who I think I'm seeing there?>
 If the other people on-scene noticed the same things Jason had, they didn't
show it. They evaluated their patient just as any other, and as Jay came over,
the decision was made to transport the injured girl via the medivac helicopter.
 While Jason and the two medics were preparing the patient for transport, she
opened her eyes briefly, groggily, though nobody noticed, as they were
concentrating on tending to her injuries. Just before anyone went to check on
her again, she lapsed into unconsciousness once more, but not before she caught
a glimpse of a uniform and a name.
 Less than 15 minutes later, Jason was watching the helicopter rise into the
air, wondering if he'd dreamed up all the things he'd just seen, and convincing
himself that he badly needed sleep.

TUESDAY, 25 NOVEMBER, 1997 16h50

 "Are you going to be okay?" Jason's coworker asked him.
 Jay regarded his left thumb, wiggling it and wincing. It looked like he had
put a purple balloon over the digit. "I think so," he grunted, obviously in a
great deal of pain. "I'll drive myself up to the Rock now and see what they
have to say about it."
 And so he did, after getting supper; however, the city works department had
chosen that particular evening to close the left-turn-lane from 14 Street to 75
Avenue for resurfacing, meaning to get into the Rockyview Hospital, Jason would
have to proceed another dozen or so blocks north on 14 Street, turn around, and
fight through rush-hour traffic southbound to get back to the same
intersection.
 <To hell with this,> he said, wheeling back into the northbound lanes. <I'll
just go up to the Foot.>
 He did just that, taking 14 Street to Glenmore to Crowchild to Memorial and up
to the Foothills Hospital, the larger of the city's two major trauma centers,
and usually, the busier by far. Still, since he could barely grip the steering
wheel, he had little choice in the matter.
 When he arrived and started to fill out the forms, the desk clerk looked at
Jay's name on the form, then back at Jay, then back at the forms, then at Jay
again.
 "Something wrong?" Jason hazarded.
 "No, sir," she told him. "You're with the Redwood Meadows Fire Department?"
 He looked down, saw his T-shirt; since it was Tuesday, his regular night for
fire duty, he'd worn his department T to and from work. "Yeah," he nodded.
 "Hang on a second." The clerk began to go through a stack of admit files on
her cubicle-desk. Finally, she held one up and read it while she spoke. "Were
you on a call Monday morning out your way with a city Medic unit and STARS?"
 Internally, he shivered. "I was," he said, masking his feeling of impending
doom.
 "The girl that STARS brought in--she's been asking for you, I think."
 Jason reeled, both mentally and physically. "Say again?"
 "She keeps asking us to get hold of a J.Low, from an R-something Fire
Department. Says that's all she could see on your uniform."
 "My uniform..?" He realized his fireproof jumpsuit, which he'd pulled on after
leaving his car during the call, had only his first initial and last name sewn
above the department patch.
 "Once you get yourself sorted out here, you might want to go see her, in..
hm.. 4207."
 "Um.. yeah."
 "Have a seat over there and the nurse will call you when it's your turn."
 "Thanks."
 With the motor control of the lone survivor of a plane crash, Jason wandered
his way over to the waiting area's chairs and plunked himself down in one, his
good hand rubbing up and down his face as if that would sort out his brains.
 Fat chance.
 He sat for forty-nine minutes, using up every one of them thinking of what he
would do once he got to room 4207. He KNEW he'd be going there, that was for
sure; he just couldn't leave this alone.
 After having his thumb (which turned out to have a slight fracture, which was
splinted) looked after, he got a Security gofer to point him towards the
elevators. The security man was someone Jason had seen a few times, seeing as
how Jason transported more than a few patients to the emergency room in the
course of his job.
 "I would've thought you'd've memorized the hospital layout by now," the guard
said.
 "Tell you the truth, I've never been off this floor. The only time I haven't
been in the ER of a hospital was when I visited my sister after she gave birth
to my nephew, and she did that over at the Rock."
 "Ouch. I'm sorry. Hey, what brings you here tonight, anyway?"
 Jason held up his thumb, wrapped in gauze and some splints. "Got 99% of myself
through a door before it shut. I should file for Worker's Comp for it."
 "Good luck. Anyway, the elevators to Unit 42 are right over here."
 "Thanks, Greg. Later."
 "Don't break any more digits," the guard said as the elevator doors closed.

 Jason tried to compose himself and get all the anxiety out of his system
before the elevator stopped on the 4th floor. Since he was coming from the 1st
floor, he had very little time to do anything.
 Room 4207 was at the far end of the longest hallway from the elevators, in
that crazed roundabout numbering system that seems to prevail in hospitals and
government-run facilities. It was a semi-private room, and the two beds he
could see through the partially-open door were empty and unused.
 "Hello?" came a female voice from inside. "Is someone there?"
 Jay's internal organs tried to all take up the same space in his throat at the
same time. He gently pushed the door the rest of the way open, and--
 --there sat Brianna Diggers, as the card beside the door had indicated. She
was sitting on her bed, an intravenous line into her left hand, and various
bandages visible all over her body.
 "..Hi," he said, for once at a loss for words.
 "NOW I remember you," she said with a smile. "You were the first one to get
there, weren't you?"
 "Uhm.. other than you, I guess, yeah."
 She grinned at his joke. "Thank you for all that you did, J.Low."
 "You're welcome, Bri'," he said, mentally slapping his forehead and yelling
"DOH!" immediately afterward.
 She looked surprised. "You know my name?"
 "Um.. I, uh,.." <Pardon me while I find some nice dark place to hide until I
go sane again.>
 "Should I know you?" she said quizzically after he trailed off. "Moreso than I
do, I mean.."
 "No, not really," he finally managed. "I.. well.. I don't think you'd believe
it."
 "If you know me, you know that most of the things that most people wouldn't
believe have already happened to me. So, out with it."
 "Okay.. um.. in that case, here, you're the tertiary character in a comic book
series which chronicles your, um, sister Gina's adventures."
 For a moment, Bri' was speechless. Then: "That would explain what's happened
to me, I think."
 "Say again?"
 "I was driving along, and got attacked by some rather pesky leprechauns. They
fired something at me, and I had set the car to auto-destruct and was going to
bail out and let it crash into them. Just then, the car's temporal/dimensional
scanners went nuts, and after a bright white flash, the next thing I remember
is waking up inside that helicopter with an image of your name and face etched
into my mind."
 Jay took a moment to process all this. "So.. you're saying you got tossed here
from another dimension?" he asked.
 "It would seem so," she said, staring at the bed for a bit. "There's something
I must try to do. Have you ever heard of a Frakes field?"
 "HEARD of it??" he echoed. "If it's a field of particles that can be used to
indicate whether or not you're the original person or a dimensionally-created
copy, I CREATED that theory."
 "Then you're perfect for the task. You and I need to build a Frakes scanner
from this." She gestured to the pulse-oximeter, monitor, and IV infuser beside
the bed.
 "Me??" he said with disbelief. "Are you nuts? A, I don't know anything about
the technical side of the Frakes theory--I just made it up for a story--and 2,
surely they're going to come and eject me for being here after visiting hours."
 "By the looks of your hand there, you didn't come through the main desk, and
didn't sign in as a visitor, did you?"
 He looked at his bandaged thumb as if noticing it for the first time. "No, I
guess I didn't," he realized aloud.
 "Okay. Well, they're going to be coming by in a few minutes for the evening
check anyway, if they do it the same way as last night, but I have an idea."

 As if on cue, a nurse entered the room six minutes later. She looked at
Brianna and said, "Everything okay?"
 "Couldn't be better," Bri' said. "Well, except for all this stuff."
 The nurse smiled. She'd definitely heard that one before. She turned to the
patient in the second bed. "How about you?"
 Jason, with a fully bandaged left hand and wrist, and an IV taped into his
right hand, smiled back. "Mostly shipshape, thanks."
 "Okay. See you in the morning, kids."
 "Later," Brianna said cheerfully.
 Ten seconds after the door had closed, Jason scrambled out of the bed, untaped
the unused IV line from his hand, and unwound the half-roll of gauze from his
wrist. After disposing of his props, he turned to face Brianna. "Pure genius."
 "Thank you," she smiled. She then gestured to the medical monitors. "Now, to
work a different kind of magic."

 In just a half-hour, they knew.
 Brianna had a strange expression on her face; partly of defeat, but also
partly one that suggested that new doors had opened.
 "So I didn't really jump dimensions," she said. "I bounced off the field, and
a COPY of me made it here. Just a COPY." She sighed, then abruptly changed to a
bright, cheerful tone. "Well, since I don't have anyplace to get back to, how
about checking me out of this place and showing me around?"
 "What??" Jason said, caught off guard.

 It should be said that after all of this, he was not at all surprised to be
driving towards home minutes later with Brianna Diggers semi-comfortably jammed
into his car's passenger seat.
 "Sorry," he said, looking over at her as he turned onto Highway 1. "It can't
go back any farther."
 She had the seat pushed back as far as it would go--impeded by the car-
organizer pouch that hung from the seatback--and had the back of the seat
reclined a fair bit too, to fit her six-foot-ten frame inside the confines of
the Taurus. "It's ok," she said. "I'll modify it later so it'll work better."
 He almost said something to her about her assumption that she'd stay at his
place, but he bit it back, partly because he didn't want to start out arguing,
and partly because she was pretty much right--he'd figured that's exactly where
she'd stay, at least for now.
 "So what's there to do on a Tuesday night in your world?" she said.
 "Oh, shit!" he blurted out, looking at his watch. "I forgot!"
 "What?"
 "Tuesday night's my training night with my fire department--we get together
and practice and do all sorts of stuff. I was going to call while I was waiting
to have my thumb looked at, and tell them I was gonna be late, but I got fazed
when the triage nurse said you'd been asking for me.."
 "When did it start?"
 "Thirty minutes ago. No, wait--an hour ago, we start a half-hour early tonight
because we've got a whole group of Cubs coming by for a tour."
 "So they should be just about gone, by the time we get there, right?"
 "Um.. I guess, probably.."
 "You don't want to go, now, do you?" she said knowingly. "Not with me around."
 "No.. well, not--"
 "Listen. I don't mean to force myself into your life, but here's the deal. A,
you seem like a neat guy to hang around with, from what I've seen so far. 2, if
I am really a copy of myself, as the scanner we made seems to indicate, I'm
pretty much going to be staying here, since 'I'm' still at home as well--
besides, we don't have any way to send me back across dimensions, right?"
 "Um, right," he trailed off, inwardly focusing on the fact that she'd used his
"A, and 2" routine. "It could be difficult getting you settled down, though."
 "How so?"
 "Well, you don't have any ID or anything, for starters."
 She said nothing, pulling a wallet out of her jacket pocket. Inside it were a
number of credit cards, a Georgia driver's license with her name and photo, and
$2000 in US bills.
 "Do you NORMALLY haul that much cash around?"
 "I was on my way to get groceries when I got zapped," she said. "Luckily, the
Frakes field seems to extend a bit around a person when they Jump."
 "Um, yeah," he said again. After a few moments' thought, he said, "What the
hell, what have I got to lose besides my sanity? Let's go visit the station."

 Brianna did not go unnoticed by the people assembled at the hall. However, Jay
was surprised by a couple of things.
 First of all, Brianna's ears, odd hair coloring, and mark on her face didn't
seem to attract much attention. It was mostly her size--and the fact that she
arrived with Jay--that made people take notice.
 Jay explained that Bri' was the girl that was involved in the "um, car crash"
early Monday morning. As everyone greeted her, Jason watched her and realized
she was in particularly good shape for someone who'd crashed a flying car into
a field and been knocked unconscious.
 "Sorry?" he said, realizing he'd been asked a question.
 Brianna smiled down at him. "I was just asked if I was intending on joining,
and I was looking to you for your opinion."
 "What?? Um.." He looked her up and down, as if to indicate with his actions.
"Other than a few logistical nightmares, I don't have any problems with that."
He excused the two of them from the group of firefighters and led her off to
one side. "However, there might be a couple other things we should concern
ourselves with, first."
 "Like what?"
 "Well, we have to convince my family that you'll be living with us now, and
then we have to come up with a bed and some clothes and other belongings for
you."
 "Oh. Right, that makes sense. Well, we can do that tomorrow, can't we?"
 "Um.. sort of, but not without a bit of difficulty. See, I work one-to-seven,
in the city. We can go out before & after that, and"--he gulped and shivered--
"I can loan you my car during those 6 hours, if necessary."
 "Why are you so nervous about that?" she said. "I'm an EXCELLENT driver."
 "I know. I've read about it before. Plus I pulled you out of a crash,
remember?"
 "Aw, that's not fair. I was in the middle of a fight.."
 "I'm just kidding, Bri'," he smiled. "PLEASE just remember to be careful."
 "Tell you what--I'll wait until we can go out together, okay? That way you
won't have anything to complain about. Now show me around."
 The group of Cubs had gone home by then, and it was just a few firefighters
left who felt the need to do a bit of cleanup work here and there. Jason took
Brianna through the station and the outbuildings, showing her the six trucks
and various tools of his trade.
 "And what's this?" Brianna said with a playful tone upon arriving in the outer
office of the administrative area. Under a layer of thick white powder sat an
old computer.
 "That's our admin computer," he said. "The dust in here is from the new office
we're building--drywall powder's getting over every damn thing."
 Bri' tch'ed a couple of times. "Not good for it, you know."
 "I know, but what can I do? Deaf ears, you know."
 "What?"
 "My advice falls on deaf ears. And I even get to say 'I-told-you-so', 'cause
the Control keys don't work anymore on the keyboard."
 "Hm." Brianna had the keyboard in her hands and was shaking it upside down and
alternatively peering into it. "Got a screwdriver?"
 Jay pulled out his Leatherman and gave it to her. Then he watched in amazement
as she sat down and tore the keyboard down to individual pieces in less than
two minutes. She carefully inspected each part, fixing what needed to be fixed,
cleaning all of it as best she could, and then reassembling the thing. "Care to
try it?"
 "Um.. sure."
 Jason grabbed the hockey stick and fished in behind the computer desk until he
flipped the power bar on. Brianna looked at him funny.
 "The computer has to be kid-proofed," he said, replacing the hockey stick.
They watched the computer boot up, and Jason opened a word processing window
and began to type. Everything worked flawlessly, of course. "Wow."
 Eventually, they and the rest of the firefighters went home, and as Jay drove
back to his house, realizing he'd forgotten to tell his father 'oh, by the way,
she'll be staying with us', Brianna said, "I have an idea. A brilliant one, if
I do say so myself."
 "Okay.. go ahead with your brilliant idea," Jason answered her.
 "Tomorrow, when you go to work, quit."
 After a long pause, he said, "Um, there are other adjectives I'd use for that
idea than 'brilliant', Bri'."
 "No, listen. The way you talked about and used that computer tonight, I gather
that you have a fairly good grasp on how they operate and function, right?"
 "You could say that.."
 "And, not to brag, but *I* have a pretty good handle on things, too."
 "That's sort of an understatement."
 "Thank you kindly. Now, is there any place in your house where we can set up a
workbench for fixing and toying with computer bits?"
 "I.. guess," he said, thinking of the last remaining unused couple of square
feet in the computer room. "I think I have an idea of what you're thinking."
 "Glad we're on the same track."

 Surprisingly enough, things went well with Jay's family. They seemed to accept
the concept of Jay bringing home this former-accident-victim to live with them.
He didn't bother asking if anyone noticed Brianna's unique facial features; it
had become obvious that no one did. Instead, he went ahead and showed Brianna
around the house briefly, before realizing they'd all have to go to bed soon,
and that meant that he'd have to find a place for Brianna to sleep.
 <And why do I get the feeling that's already been decided FOR me?> he thought.

 It wasn't as he'd imagined (or feared); he slept in his bed, and Brianna took
the futon in the spare room--or rather, she took the futon and part of the
floor. There wasn't a bed in the house that she'd be able to comfortably rest
in, Jason realized. She might be able to keep her entire body on Jay's parents'
bed, if she lay diagonally across it. That, or she could lie on the couch with
her head resting on one armrest and her shins on the other.
 He was thinking about all this the next morning, as he lay in his own bed, his
feet sticking off the end ever-so-slightly. <This bed would be a joke to her,>
he told himself. <We'll have to figure something reasonable out soon.>
 He realized how he was adapting to her being in his life, and reeled mentally.

 Jason's boss reacted about how he'd expected, what with the upcoming Christmas
season and all. He gave her a week's notice, promising to help train someone
else to take over his duties. After that, he worked his regular six-hour shift,
got into his car, and sighed. So, after the third of December, he was going to
be unemployed. Or was he? Brianna seemed to have something up her sleeve, maybe
like a computer consulting-slash-fixit service.
 He'd just been paid his regular pay, plus vacation pay, giving him a bit of
extra money--that, and he was still working his way through the money he got
for his birthday, and all that would hopefully keep him in the black for the
remainder of the month. That didn't include Christmas gifts, though.
 He remembered he had two more people to buy gifts for, now: his seven-month-
old nephew, and Brianna. His mind wandered and he realized he didn't know how
old Brianna was. She had the physical appearance of a twenty-four or twenty-
five-year-old, but in the comic book world, she was only two or three years old
in the most recent issue he had seen.
 His thoughts went back to the money issue. The fire department was going to
pay him on the sixteenth of December--that would give him a couple of bucks
with which to come up with presents.
 He'd driven halfway home already, lost in thought. He glanced down and saw his
speedometer reading 145. <Yikes.> He backed off a couple of notches, letting it
settle into a cruise at about 120. His thoughts went back to Brianna again.
 <Her appearance has really screwed me up,> he realized. If someone had come to
him on his birthday and said that two weeks later, he'd be quitting his job and
going into business with a person who just literally fell into his life out of
a comic book, he'd've figured they were nuts.
 Maybe HE was nuts. Maybe he'd crashed the car Monday morning, and was lying
comatose in the Foothills Hospital, running through some wild dream. No, this
was too real, and he would've remembered if he'd been about to wreck out.
 <Too REAL?> he echoed in his mind. <Um, think about it.>
 And so he did, but in his convoluted way of thinking, he concentrated on
Brianna's arrival itself.
 <Wouldn't a self-destruct mechanism have left SOME parts of the car intact?
How did she know to check for a Frakes field? And why did she single ME out,
instead of any of the other half-dozen people who worked on her that night?>
 Instead of driving straight through the intersection of Highway 22 and Balsam
Avenue, as he would have if he were heading home, he instead turned right, and
headed up toward the area where Brianna had appeared.

 Ten minutes later, he was standing in the field where it'd happened. Using his
handheld Streamlight, he was illuminating the area. There was a bit of sawdust
lying around where the fluids had been cleaned up from the ditch, but nothing
else remained--no deep ruts, no vehicle parts, no other significant markers
that would indicate any kind of crash had occured there.

 Another twenty minutes after that, Jay returned to the house, finding Brianna
and Rob, Jay's brother-in-law, playing SimCity. "Hi," Jay said.
 "Hi," Brianna answered.
 "Greetings," Rob nodded, staring at the screen.
 "Having fun?" Jason said, putting his jacket on the doorknob and checking out
the city being devised.
 "Loads," Bri' declared. "We just had to deal with a monster attack."
 "I HATE it when that happens. By the way, I gave my boss a week's notice." 
 "Good."
 "You WHAT?" Rob said.
 "I think Bri' and I are gonna start our own computer services business," Jason
told him. "Right?" he directed at Brianna.
 "Exactly," she confirmed, smiling.
 "Just like that?"
 "Just like that," Jason nodded. "Later, though. Right now, we need to talk."
 "Aw, don't take her away, Jay," Rob complained halfheartedly. "She's given me
a lot of valuable advice."
 "Save it till tomorrow," Jay said, dragging Bri' out of the room and up toward
his own.

 "So what did you want to talk about?" she asked him when they got upstairs.
 "Um.." he trailed off, thinking about what he'd been wanting to say. <How do
you confront someone about inconsistencies in their story?> "I've got a couple
questions about the crash."
 "Anything in specific?"
 "Well, for one, the fact that absolutely nothing remains of the car." He sat
on the edge of the bed, while she took the computer desk chair. "No gouges in
the soil, no bits of debris, et cetera."
 She shrugged. "Maybe it came apart in cross-dimensional space."
 "But there were fluids from it on the ground," he pointed out.
 For the absolute shortest instant of time, she looked like he'd caught her.
Then: "Some of the liquid must've escaped through the portal with me. I had
some on me when you found me, right?"
 "We ALL did that night," he said, distinctly remembering the smell of boiled
engine coolant. "We had to wade through a ditch full of it to get to you."
 "See? There you go."
 He meant to protest more, but it was her turn to catch him off-guard. She saw
a box on the desk and picked it up. "What's this?"
 "A game," he told her as she turned the case over to look at the pictures on
the back. "Um, come to think of it, you might enjoy that.. it's called Tomb
Raider, as you can probably tell."
 "They got my sister's looks all wrong," she observed, turning the box over
once more.
 "It's not supposed to be Gina," he said. "Though some people say it's based
upon Gold Dig--um, on your sister's adventures."
 "Where is it?" she asked, turning on the computer monitor.
 "On the machine downstairs. Won't run on this one."
 "Why not?"
 "Because this is a 386, Bri'. You need at least a Pentium, a better CD drive,
and a color monitor to play TR."
 "Oh. Got any stuff we can improve this machine with?"
 He saw the garage full of boxes in his mind's eye. "Like what?"
 "Old computers, other semi-useless bits of electronics, stuff like that," she
said.
 "Um.. yeah. Hang on, I'll go get it, but I'm skeptical."
 She turned around and gave him a look that said 'oh, please' as he went out.
 Several minutes later, he came back with a pair of boxes and put them on the
floor beside his bed. She started to open one, and he said, "Wait.. no peeking
till I get it all up here."
 Four more trips, and about sixteen more boxes later, they took a look at what
he'd found.
 "Ooookaaayy.." she said slowly. "A Commodore 64, an XT, a 286 clone, and this
386 clone, and parts from about five or six stereos and TVs. Um, ..okay, no,
this might work." She reached in and pulled out the 64 and its disk drive.
 After a few moments, Jason said, "Um.. you going to keep working on this all
night? It IS ten-forty-five, yaknow."
 She looked up at him. "You're not one of those people that go to sleep before
like three or four, are you?"
 "Well.. the thought had crossed my mind.."
 "We'll see what happens. Help me out here," she said, gesturing to the 286.
 He held the computer case and she extricated the old motherboard, then set it
aside while she unbolted all the other bits from the metal enclosure.
 "What parts are you going to use?" he asked.
 She looked up at him and grinned briefly. "Everything."
 "Even the 64? I was being sarcastic with that.. besides, it has a bit of an
overheating problem."
 "Overheating's never a problem," she countered with a wave of dismissal. "Just
means you need a bigger fan, like.. this." She pulled the power supply out of
the 286's case and set it down on the desk. "Okay, toss that thing aside for a
moment."
 "So what can we do with an 8-megahertz XT, a 20mhz 286, a 33mhz 386, and a 4mhz
64?" he put forth. "Other than make the sorriest LAN anyone's ever seen."
 She looked at him again with that grin. "Would you please just let me work?"
she said politely. "Help me out by cleaning off the desk and the area around
it."
 He did that, taking a few moments; then, as his watch beeped to signify a new
hour had started, he realized something. "Oh, damn.. Highlander's starting."
 "Can you tape it?" Bri' asked as she rummaged through some of the old computer
components she'd strewn across the bed.
 "Yup.. be right back." Jason rushed downstairs, slammed a tape into the VCR,
and pushed record, then rushed back upstairs. The 386 was now shut off and
entirely disassembled. "Yikes!" he exclaimed.
 Bri' was apparently ready for his reaction. "Trust me."
 And so he did; through the late night/early morning, he helped out where he
could, but mostly watched Brianna go through three or four plans of action. She
had taken every piece of equipment--including the VCR and TV from his room--
down to their major components, and made several attempts to piece everything
together in an entirely new way. Often, she'd get partway through the rebuild,
look at some component, curse quietly and tear everything apart, starting over.
 It continued like this until about 4 AM, when Jason finally said, "Well, I'm
getting kinda tired.. I think I'll pack it in, myself.."
 "Go ahead," Bri' said distractedly from her work. "I'm going to work on a
couple ideas before I head off."
 He looked at his bed, covered with electronic bits, as were the desk, chest of
drawers, bookshelf, and part of the floor. "O..kay," he finally said, gathering
up a change of clothes, his contact lens gear, and fire pager, and heading
across to what had become Brianna's room.

 The next morning--actually, the next afternoon, since he technically woke up
at five after twelve, Jason got up and stumbled back into his room, quietly
opening the door a crack.
 On the bed, mostly, was an unconscious Brianna; on the floor were several
items. He didn't enter the room, so as not to awaken Bri', and he tried to size
up the newly-rebuilt equipment from the doorway.
 The XT, 286, and 386 cases were grossly modified; in fact, it appeared as if
the XT and 286 were bolted together, the plastic fascias of each one cut and
reshaped to fit whatever was inside now--appearing to be the drives from all
four computers (including the floppy drive from the Commodore). It would
follow, then, that the 386 had all three motherboards inside it; and the ribbon
cables that led into the heavily modified tan case of the C-1541 drive supplied
the connections between the three motherboards and all the former expansion
ports and sockets that had been on them.
 Two of the four monitors sat on the desk, along with two of the keyboards. The
TV and VCR were back in their usual spot, with a ribbon cable attaching them to
the back of the 1541 case. The 64, its monitor, and another keyboard and
monitor, along with some wires and more ribbon cable, were set apart from the
rest, sitting beside the door.
 Jammed into the bookshelf were some of the stereo parts, Jason's Discman, the
computer speakers, and a few things he didn't even recognize. Again, another
cable went from the contraption back to the 1541 case.
 He closed the door quietly and went downstairs.

 "Sleep well?" Jason asked a still tired-looking Brianna half an hour later
when she finally emerged.
 She responded with only a yawn.
 "I took a peek into the room this morning," he said. "Looks.. interesting."
 "Yeah, I'm not happy with the speed of it, or its capacity, though. I think
we'll have to go make a purchase or two today."
 "Um.. okay. Guess I should clean out the car." His mind went back to what he'd
been working on asking her the night previous. "Speaking of cars.."
 "Hey, do you have any tuna around?" Brianna interrupted, entering the kitchen
and opening cupboards left and right. "I couldn't find any yesterday morning."
 "Er, only the cat food, I think. But we do have some bread and peanut butter,
if that'll work. Or cereal, there's about five kinds of cereals in there."
 She made a disappointed face and took the corn flakes down. "Well, at least
there's mil--"
 "Oh. Sorry. No milk. My father used the last of it this morning."
 "Maybe we'd better make up a grocery list, too," she commented dryly.
 "Sorry," he repeated. "Your arrival was rather unexpected."
 "I'm sorry," she said after a moment. "I didn't mean to be rude."
 "Don't worry about it," he told her. "If I'd known you were going to stay
here, I'd've picked up some stuff the other day."
 "I guess I could've made my intentions known, too," she said in an apologetic
tone.
 He said with mild exasperation, "Can we both agree to stop being sorry to one
another, please?"
 "Sorr--" she answered facetiously, cutting herself off and smiling.
 "When did you want to leave, then?" he asked her.
 "How long do you need to be ready?"
 "Um.." He ran through his morning routine in his head: Shower, get dressed,
check his email--okay, the last one could be scratched off the list--toss
something down his throat, shovel out the car.. "Let's say an hour, going by
the Dad Law."
 "The what?" she said, sounding and looking amused.
 "The Dad Law. You know, the one where you want fifty bucks, ask for a hundred,
and get fifty: you get what you want, he feels like he's negotiated something
with you, and everyone's happy."
 She was indeed seeing the funny side of that concept, then came to a
realization: "How does that apply to OUR conversation??"
 "Um, okay.. well, depending on what I find in my very, VERY messy car, it
could take anywhere from fifteen minutes to half an hour to dig out. Then I'll
get conscientious and have to consider putting some oil and tranny fluid and
other stuff like that in it, and that'll eat up the rest of the time, not
including the ten minutes for the shower I'm about to take." He was on his feet
and halfway to the bathroom by the time he'd finished.

 "Done yet?" Brianna said precisely an hour later, meeting Jason down by the
car.
 "Um, almost," he said, putting some wiper fluid in the bin. He ended up with
about 1/32nd of an inch of fluid in the bottom of the jug, which he poured over
the headlights, wiping them off with a paper towel.
 "What about the little lights under the bumper?"
 Before he realized who he was saying it to, he'd said, "Oh, the driving
lights? Those don't work," and by the time his mind had caught up with his
words, Bri' was kneeling before the car, wiggling the cables and opening the
lamp covers to look at the bulbs.
 "Turn 'em on," she instructed him, and after a moment, he went to the driver's
seat and flipped the rocker switch.
 "Anything?" he asked.
 "Not yet. Hang on.. oh, this might do it. Got that Leatherman of yours handy?"
 He pulled it out of the holster on his belt and tossed it to her.
 "And some electrical tape, if you've got some, please."
 He went to the back of the car, extracted his toolbox, and set it on the hood;
the electrical tape went into Brianna's hand, and the circuit tester went to
the garage floor beside her head.
 She looked up to see it there. "Perfect, thanks." She snatched it up and
started toying around. The left driving light came on after a few seconds.
 "That one is the one that works most often," he said. "I think the right one
must be burned out, 'cause it stopped working about three weeks after I
installed the system."
 "That doesn't make sense, you silly boy," she said playfully. "Gotta be a
short somewhere." In seconds, she had it tracked down, and both lights were
lit.
 "Um.. thanks," Jay said.
 She was back on her feet now, taking the damp paper towel and cleaning off the
lenses of the driving lamps. "No sweat, it was easy."
 "Yeah.. I've just never been motivated enough to get them working again."
 "Oh, I'm not saying you couldn't've done it," she reassured him. "I just love
challenges."
 "I've noticed," he said as they got into the car.

 Jason detested following someone else around while they shopped, but he had to
admit, the fact that it was Brianna that he was following around was a plus.
 He wondered about the feelings he was getting for her, and told himself that
they were to be expected. That was fine, and he didn't mind the fact that he
actually liked Brianna (in fact, it was quite a welcome feeling); however, in
the back of his mind, he was still nagging himself about the fact that her
story didn't seem to work when one looked at all the pieces.
 They'd gone to Superstore and bought out a lot of their tuna stock; they'd
scoured all the malls, looking for clothes that would fit her, which was quite
an accomplishment when they finally succeeded (inasmuch as there weren't many
six-foot-ten, incredibly-well-built women around).
 That reminded Jason that the fire department had no gear in stock that would
even come close to fitting Brianna, so he took her to WFR, their dealer, and
had them build a set for her.
 "I can't believe they had it in stock," Brianna said as she carried the yellow
suit out to the car.
 "They've got EVERYTHING," Jason answered. "We get everything from ten-dollar
plastic flashlight holders to $30,000 sets of rescue tools from them."
 Later, they went shopping elsewhere in the city. Among other things, they'd
picked up a bunch of stuff that Brianna figured would help her work her magic
on the car; as they'd traveled into the city, she'd noticed all the things that
were wrong, and, seeing the challenge, as it were, needed to get some stuff to
fix it all.
 Their only saving grace, Jason realized, was that in addition to the $2000
that Bri' had on her person, all her credit cards were fresh, like-new, without
any outstanding amounts on them, so they had lots and lots of room for making
purchases.
 <But her cards should come up as 'invalid account' here,> he reminded himself.
<Unless the computers see them as valid cards without billing addresses, in
which case we've either hit the jackpot or we'll end up in deep trouble
eventually..>
 "Hey," he finally said, the bits nagging at his conscience winning, "I've got
something I want to ask you about your being here and all the logistics of--"
 "So," she interrupted him again, "where's the best-stocked computer store in
town? We need to buy a top-of-the-line PC, a couple of disk drives, a good
printer, a couple of monitors, and some more modems, plus a newer OS than what
you've got there."
 "What?" he found himself sidetracked, losing his train of thought. "Um.. well,
let's go back over near Chinook. Remember the big blue building across the
street?"
 "Doppler?"
 "Well, not that one; actually, I meant the Office Depot. Just behind it is a
big one called Computer City. It's better than all the others in the city
combined. That," he smiled, "and I've got a preferred customer card for them."
 "Good plan!" she enthused.
 He drove on towards Computer City, his latest attempt to get the full story
from her forgotten.

 On the way home, he again tried, and she again changed the subject, this time
asking him to point out all the major things of interest in Calgary. And so he
did, and they arrived back home around suppertime, first unloading the
groceries, then the computer gear. Brianna made herself four tuna sandwiches,
and took them upstairs to Jason's room.
 He followed her, helping her carry the computer stuff. Once they unboxed it,
he reviewed what they'd--or rather, she'd--purchased: A DEC Alpha 500-based
machine, a 31" LCD monitor, the best graphics card setup, a kick-ass sound
setup, a very fast color laser printer, four USR 56k modems, two ISDN boxes, a
bunch of drives totalling about twenty-four gigs of drive space, tons and tons
of chip memory, a 18-disc 24x CD-ROM box, and a few other bits and pieces. Even
without the monitor, Jason was staring at $20,000 of equipment, and it scared
him to wonder what Brianna was planning to do with it.
 He soon found out: What would fit inside the Alpha was installed there, and
what wouldn't, was arrayed in the other, older boxes. The motherboards from the
XT and 286 were tossed; the older hard drives (two forty-meggers from the XT, a
hundred-and-fifty-megger out of the 286, and a 1.2-gig from the 386) were
hooked up to the 386 board, which Bri' somehow set up as a slave processor
operating under the supervision of the Alpha system. The old black-and-white
VGA monitor, the two EGA monitors from the XT and 286, and all of the Commodore
equipment was tossed. The Alpha keyboard and the keyboard hooked up to the 386
box were put on the desk, and the big LCD monitor was mounted on the edge of
the desk, bolted to the wall for extra stability. The old Backpack CD-ROM was
put into storage, as were the three 14.4 modems and one 28.8 from the various
older machines. The ISDN box wouldn't be set up yet, nor would three of the
four 56k conventional modems, but the first one was put on his BBS line.
Brianna set up the UNIX OS she'd picked up, configured it to use Jason's old
domain address, and while they installed the other components, had the machine
dial into his news and mail provider to pick up all the stuff that had been
waiting for two-and-a-half days.
 They were almost done; all the jury-rigged cards that Brianna had managed to
stuff into the 1541's case had to be hooked up to the new machine. Thus, the
VCR, TV, and stereo could be controlled from the keyboard. After that, she
hooked up the printer, which was the easiest of the whole configuration--a
simple case of plugging in the cable.
 Jason leaned back as he read the huge display, the uucico process bringing in
the mail. The characters were about an inch-and-a-half tall, on such a large
monitor, and he mentioned that. Brianna got to work on that right away; she
installed some kind of a graphical interface, like X, but of 'my own creation'
as she put it. She ramped the resolution up to numbers Jason thought didn't
exist in reality, and the display shifted. The screen looked like it could fit
several pages of actual-size word processing documents on it, and still have
room for a good game of TR in the corner.
 "Hey.. the whole purpose of this was so you could play Tomb Raider up here
instead of trudging all the way downstairs," he observed. "You KNOW TR's a DOS
game, right?"
 "Simplicity itself." Bri' tapped a couple of keys, and up popped a window with
what looked like a DOS prompt in it. She drummed out another series of
commands, and a Windows-95 emulator sprang to life in another window. Yet
another group of instructions brought up an OS/2 session.
 "Unreal.." he whispered.
 All the windows vanished. "Now," she smiled, reaching for the Tomb Raider CD,
to stuff it into the monster CD changer. "To do what we came here to do, as you
reminded me."
 Jason was blown away when the game went full-screen. 1280x1024 was a fairly
low resolution by the machine's standards, but on the big screen, it almost
looked like a real-life, eight-inch-tall Lara Croft was right there, jumping,
running, and shooting her way through the TR levels. The surround-sound system
took Jay by surprise too, when the wolves from the first level growled and
snarled RIGHT BEHIND HIM.
 "Holy shit," he whispered. Brianna grinned.
 <To do what we came here to do,> Brianna's words echoed in his head. "Hey,
I've got a couple of questions about--"
 "Aie! A bear!" Brianna squealed. The character on-screen backed up and fired
repeatedly, going through a doorway. Squeaking noises suddenly came through the
speakers.
 "What's that??" she said.
 "Um, it's.." Jay got out, before the LCD displayed what he was trying to say.
 "AAH! BATS!" Brianna hollered. "How'd'ya switch to the pulse rifle??!"
 "I'm afraid there isn't one," Jason told her, remembering Brianna's fear of
bats from the comic book.
 "Aw, nuts!" she said, pounding the keyboard. Lara fired the pistols faster
than Jason'd ever seen, and three bats fell to the floor of the cavern and
flopped around a little bit while Brianna continued to pump lead into them.
 "Don't forget the bear," Jason said, hearing a growl in the rear half of the
surround sound system.
 "Yikes!"
 "Just hold down the 'action' key," Jason told her. "It'll keep firing at your
target until it's dead."
 "NOW you tell me!" On the 500mhz machine, the pistols barked as if they were
submachineguns; the bear dropped in a second or two.

 Moments became hours, and "just one more level" was promised more than a few
times. Ultimately, at three in the morning, having finished Level 14, Brianna
decided to pack it in.
 Jay was determined to get a word in this time: "Listen, Bri', there's some
things I need to talk to you about."
 She looked concerned, which Jason noticed. "Yes?" she finally said.
 He opened his mouth to speak, and a loud series of tones filled the room,
followed by equally loud beeping, as if an alarm clock from hell was going
off. Brianna spun around. "What's that?!"
 "The pager," Jay said, pointing to his fire radio sitting on the windowsill.
 "A call??" Brianna enthused. "Whee!"
 "Ssshh!" Jay demanded as the dispatcher's voice came over the line, describing
the type and location of the call. They were being sent to a motor vehicle
accident--an MVA--at the intersection of two highways, south of town.
 "What's 'delta' mean?"
 "There's four levels of response," Jason said as the house emptied of people.
Along with Bri' and himself, Jay's brother-in-law and father were also going.
(Jay's sister was a firefighter as well, but had to stay home with her seven-
month-old child.) "Alpha is the least urgent, things like a cut finger, or
someone who's stopped having a seizure. Bravo's worse, like an MVA with unknown
injuries, or a broken leg--things that might become dangerous injuries later.
Charlie is worse than Bravo--things that'll require the services of an Advanced
paramedic to tend to."
 "And Delta?"
 "Extreme urgency, critical cases." The four of them piled into Jay's father's
Explorer, to carpool to the station. "Or, in this case, one or more of: Trapped
or ejected victim, multiple victims, or not alert/unconscious."
 "So this is going to be a bad one, then," Bri' observed.
 She noted the excited sound in Jason's voice. "Most likely," he said.
 Jason's father, a Captain, got on the radio and announced to the other
responders that the four of them were enroute. In the meantime, Jay's brother-
in-law Rob, being a Lieutenant, turned to face Brianna and said, "Since you're
still probationary, you're going to stick right by Jason's side and follow his
instructions, okay?"
 "Got it," she nodded.
 They listened to the update: A truck had missed the stop sign at the junction
of Highways 22 and 66, a particularly unforgiving trouble spot. It punished
those who blew the stop sign with a rather large, mostly immovable hill.
 "What's STARS?" Bri' asked a moment later when she heard it referred to on the
radio.
 "Medivac helicopter," Jason explained. "The one you flew in the other day."
 "Ohh," Bri' said, nodding again.
 As they approached the fire station, the Emergency--their rescue truck--roared
past. Just behind it went the Bush Buggy--a 4x4 with more rescue gear aboard.
 They arrived at the station in time to hear the Emergency report to Dispatch
that the helicopter was indeed needed; there would be an extrication; send a
second ambulance in addition to the first; and keep everyone else coming.
 The next-due truck was the pumper, so the four of them bailed out of the
Explorer at the station and boarded the pump. Jason was in the driver's seat,
with his father across in the front right, the officer's position; Rob took a
seat in the back, along with two of the department's newer members. Brianna
wedged herself semi-comfortably into the space between Jason and his father.
 Brianna thought SHE drove fast, but Jason had her beat. He skillfully ran the
pumper truck through its paces, getting it up to its maximum speed of 115kph in
very little time at all. All the time, while he was working the siren and air
horn, and driving, he often caught a glimpse of Brianna checking her watch.
 "Don't sweat it, we'll get there," he smiled. He slowed to a safe, cautious
speed long enough to clear the stop signs in the town of Bragg Creek itself,
then thundered the 17-ton truck up the hill towards Highway 66.

 As they got off the pump, Jason's father took the two second-year members and
went to work on getting some lighting set up. Rob went to get the mutual-aid
radio so that he could communicate the vital info to STARS. Jason led Brianna
into the ditch.
 He watched her face as they approached the scene; she wasn't overwhelmed, but
looked rather in awe. Just as they began to approach, seven people left the cab
of the truck with a man strapped to a long white spineboard.
 "Quick," Jason said, striding as well as he could in the long grass, over to
the mangled fence. "Help me hold this down."
 Brianna did, all the while still checking the time, until the crew was able to
put the patient down on the shoulder of the road, on the other side of the
fence.
 "Someone got a light here?"
 Jay turned on the light fixed to his helmet and strode over to the paramedic.
Brianna stayed with Jason, as ordered.
 The medic wanted Jay's light on the big man's chest. He cut open the patient's
shirt and put the defibrillator paddles on the exposed skin. The monitor showed
a rough but generally flat line.
 The paramedic checked for a pulse at the neck, and watched for respirations.
 "Black?" Jason queried. The medic nodded.
 "What?" Brianna asked Jay with a surprised tone.
 "I'll get a blanket from our truck," Jason said to the medic. "STARS still
needed?"
 "Yeah, his buddy's almost as bad."
 "Okay."
 "Jay?" Bri' said hestitantly as the two of them walked to the Emergency. "Does
'black' mean what I think it does?"
 Jason opened the back doors and pulled a blanket off the stretcher. "Like
responses, there are four levels of patient status. Green is walking-wounded.
Yellow is a patient who needs attention at a hospital. Red is a patient who
needs attention at a hospital RIGHT NOW. And black.. is beyond help."
 "Oh, no."
 "It happens." He wasn't being flippant or unfeeling, just truthful. He went to
the paramedic and helped him cover the body. "Do you need a hand with anything
up here?"
 "No.. but like I said, my partner's still at the truck with this guy's buddy.
He's really dark red," the paramedic told Jason.
 "Okay. We're on it." 
 "Thanks."
 Jason and Brianna hopped the fence again. As they walked up the side of the
hill, Brianna checked her watch once more.
 They arrived at the passenger side of the wrecked truck. It had hit the hill
with tremendous force; its frame was bent, the engine was inside the passenger 
compartment, and the cab was compressed to about half its normal size.
 Inside that cab was one more person, with his knees nearly touching his chin.
He appeared to be only semiconscious.
 "Joe, can you hear me?" the medic crouching in the box of the truck kept
saying. He was holding the passenger's head, through the smashed-out rear
window, so that his spine wouldn't be damaged. "Almost done. You hear me, Joe?"
 Meanwhile, some of Jason's colleagues from the fire department were using the
rescue tools to pry open the door, to get Joe out. One of the helper workers
leaned over to Jason. This man worked as a landscaper in the daytime. He nodded
at the deep gouge in the hill. "This truck did in 3 seconds what it would've
taken me 10 hours to do in the Bobcat," he said.
 "I believe it, Ar," Jason said. "Is this gonna open soon?"
 "Just popping the door, and then maybe a dash roll, depending on where his
feet are."
 "Right." Jay turned to talk to Brianna. "We're gonna force the door open with
the spreaders, then we might have to push the dash upward to get it off his
lower legs and feet. ..Why do you keep checking the time like that?"
 Brianna let go of the button on her watch; the IndiGlo light ceased. "Um, just
trying to keep track of something."
 "Whatever. Here, watch and learn; this door's about to let go."
 And so it did, the latch assembly tearing away. Two or three helpers grabbed
the window frame and bent the door forward well past its normal opening range,
deforming it enough to get best access to the patient.
 As it turned out, they didn't need to roll the dash. Jason and Brianna held
the end of the backboard while the others slid the passenger out onto it, and
after the patient was secured, the paramedic took over. "Thanks, guys," he
said. Brianna and Jason stayed with the truck while the other seven people
carted the backboard down the hill.
 "Jay!" came a voice from the bottom of the ditch.
 Jason turned. "Yeah, Chief?"
 "Can you check for the ownership and stuff?"
 "Sure will, Chief," Jason said, turning around to find the glove box. "It's
not always guts and glory," he asided to Brianna.
 As it turned out, the truck had impacted the earth so violently that things
like the glove box were ripped out of the dash. Its shell was in a billion
pieces, as were the passenger's knees, no doubt. The contents were on the floor
and seat, some still wet with blood.
 "You okay with this?" Jason asked Brianna.
 She was turned away; Jason would've thought she was trying not to see, but in
actual fact, she was trying to make sure Jason wouldn't see her looking at her
watch again. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine," she said.
 Seconds later, just as Jason was picking up the pink slip off the passenger
floor, he felt a hand grasp the back of his jumpsuit and haul him forcibly
down and backwards. All the papers in his hands went flying off behind him as
he and Brianna landed on their rear ends in the dry, tall grass.
 "What the hell was THAT for?" Jason said. He flipped his helmet light back on
and scanned around for the insurance and registration, which had landed four or
five meters further away from the truck. As he got up and went that direction,
he saw Brianna's ears prick up, just before he heard the sound himself.
 "There's no other sound quite like it," he said knowingly. "And nobody else
uses a helicopter like that in this province."
 In seconds, the MBB BK117 custom-built medivac helicopter belonging to the
Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society came over the horizon from the north and
circled for its landing approach.
 Jason was bent over, retrieving the paperwork from the grass, when he heard a
SWOCK! from behind him. He spun around to see a road flare, still burning,
embedded in the seat cushion of the truck.
 As his mind caught up with the images being fed it, Jason realized that the
flare had been one that delineated the helicopter landing zone, set up on the
road over a hundred meters away. The rotor wash from the helicopter must have
picked it up and sent it hurtling, like a missile with a three-inch nail on one
end and a ferocious blaze on the other, right at the truck.
 Jason shuddered as he realized that he'd been standing right there looking for
the ownership moments before.
 He shuddered again when he realized that Bri' had pulled him out of that very
spot, in the line of fire, exactly 60 seconds before the flare had passed
through it.
 One of the other people milling about dumped a fire extinguisher on the free-
burning seat cushion and flare as Jason turned to Brianna and said, "How in the
hell did you know that was going to happen?"
 She looked like she didn't have an answer, and then suddenly, said: "I.. saw
the flares there, and heard the helicopter coming, and put two and two together
and figured we'd be better off a bit further away and on the ground."
 <That doesn't make sense,> Jason told himself, even while nodding at Brianna
as if to accept her excuse. <First of all, she only heard the bird seconds
before I did, and secondly, she's been checking her watch almost continuously
all night.>
 He couldn't help but draw some similarities between the incident and some of
the unexplainables in Brianna's arrival.

 Upon returning home, Jason wanted, and fully intended, to grill Brianna about
all the things that were bouncing around in his head, but he fell unconscious
on his bed, inasmuch as it was well past 5am, and he had to work his last shift
at Esso in just under eight hours.
 Once he woke up, he realized if he hurried, he might just be late enough for
work that they'd notice. He ran through the shower, got his work clothes, ran
down the stairs, and found his car in pieces, Brianna underneath it.
 "Oop! Sorry, I thought you were already done with your job," she said when she
saw him standing there. There was no chance she'd get it back together in time,
so she simply went back to work. "I thought you gave them a week's notice eight
days ago."
 "How come you've started four projects at once??" he asked rhetorically,
noticing the engine torn apart, the dash disassembled, the wheels off, and the
driver's door unbolted and in pieces. He took the steps three at a time to
return inside to ask his sister Jennifer if he could borrow her truck.
 He didn't notice Brianna's disturbed look as she checked her watch for the
date and frowned in disapproval and worry.
 Twenty minutes later, he was on the way into the city, speeding a fair bit,
but not conspicuously enough to warrant attention from the police, since other
cars and trucks were still passing him.
 He should've foregone lunch, but didn't, since he'd slept through breakfast,
because of the early-morning rescue call. As he was parked in the McDonald's
drive-thru, receiving his bag full of food, he heard a thunderous BOOM from
just north of him, and less than a minute later, the radio scanner on the seat
beside him blared to life:
 "26 Pump and Tank, 19 Pump and Aerial, 16 Emergency, 16 Hazmat, South Chief,
this is for an explosion and fire, map 219 charlie 5.."
 "No," Jason shook his head. "It can't be." He patched out leaving the drive-
thru and sped off towards Midlake Boulevard and his place of employment.

THAT EVENING

 Jason slammed the door that led from the garage to the basement. The dog began
barking.
 He reached the top of the stairs to see his family, surprised at the volume of
his return home, and the expression they saw on his face.
 "Are you okay?" Jason's mother said. "We just saw it on the news."
 "I wasn't there yet, I was still at McPuke's," he answered sharply.
 "Was anyone hurt?"
 "Tim was burned pretty badly, along with two customers and the tanker driver.
They're in the Foot now."
 "Oh, God," Jennifer said.
 "Where is Brianna?" Jason bit out.
 "Upstairs, I think," Jason's father answered.
 "She and I need to talk." Jason stormed upstairs.

 "Hi," Brianna said, turning around to see Jason enter his room. She appeared
relieved. "What's wrong?"
 "How did you know?"
 "Sorry?"
 Jason spun the chair around and held Bri' down by her wrists, on the arms of
the chair (knowing full well it was a futile gesture, since she could've picked
him up and tossed him out the closed window if she wanted to). "No more fuckin'
around, Bri'. No more evading the questions, or changing the subject on me."
 "What are you TALKING about?" she said, her expression almost making him
believe she really didn't know.
 "I take it you haven't seen or heard any news today," he answered, standing
up.
 "After I finished on the car, I stayed up here all afternoon, mucking around,"
she said. "What?"
 "The gas station where I used to work burned to the ground today. Four people
are in critical condition in hospital. One was the guy that I was supposed to
be training, who was in there because I was late. I was late because you'd
stripped my car down to individual parts."
 "Yeah, and it works really great now. You should--"
 "I don't want to hear it!" he snapped. "I told you, you're not going to change
the subject on me this time. How did you know that the station was going to
burn today?"
 "I didn't!" she retorted. "How could I POSSIBLY have known, unless I could see
into the future?"
 "Bri', I'm starting to consider that as a possibility," he shot back, turning
away and halfheartedly trying to pull his hair out. He looked at her again.
"After your arrival here from another DIMENSION--an explanation which has some
holes in it as WELL--I don't think I'll ever consider anything 'impossible'
ever again."
 "Well, what can I say? How can I prove to you that I didn't have any prior
knowledge of the explosion and fire?"
 He eyed her. "I didn't tell you about the explosion," he said after a moment.
 She looked stunned, but regained most of her composure shortly. "Okay, so
maybe I DID hear some news sometime during the day, but it didn't register.. so
what?"
 "Geezus, Brianna.." He shook his head. "I don't know what to think here. First
the inconsistencies in the story about your arrival, then the flare thing last
night, and now this." He seemed like he was finished, turning to face the wall,
but he spun back around and continued once more: "Think about it from my
perspective. The investigators asked me today if I had any suspicions about
what could've happened. What I KNOW happened is that the tanker wasn't properly
grounded and while he was fueling the station, it sparked and caused a fire,
but.. after all the stuff I've noticed with regards to your behavior, do you
have any CLUE what was going through my mind while they waited for an answer??"
 "I hope you were thinking about how CRAZY it'd sound if you told them what you
thought," she said flatly.
 "Just give me a straight answer--please," he said with a sigh of exasperation.
"What do you know about all these things that're almost but not quite happening
to me?"
 "I swear," she said slowly and calmly, "I have had absolutely nothing to do
with any of the incidents you're referring to. And I resent the implication
that you think I HAVE."
 "I DON'T," he asserted. "I'm trying to make some sense out of all this."
 "Well, I can't offer any explanations for you," she said. "I just got lucky in
a couple of 'feelings', I guess."
 "Gonna have any more 'feelings' tomorrow or the next day, or next week?" Right
after he said that, he softened. "Sorry. That was uncalled for. I apologize. I
think maybe we should just end this discussion here and forget about it."
 "I agree," she said. "That would please me a lot."
 Jay declared that he would be going down to the garage to check out his newly-
rebuilt car. Brianna told him she'd be along in a minute, and began shutting
down her jobs on the computer.
 She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the black part of the screen. <You
convinced him, Bri'.. THIS time,> she told her image, just before she got up
and went downstairs.

 Two weeks passed. The people in the hospital showed signs of recovery, which
made Jason eventually forget his tirade; if their conditions had deteriorated,
he certainly would've tied Brianna down and forced an answer from her.
 As it was, things settled down, for the most part, and after confronting her,
Jay felt no real need to press the issue about the stories about her arrival
that didn't quite fit. Part of him wanted to believe that she was telling the
truth, and it was just coincidence that fate had dropped this goddess out of
the sky into his lap, and had definitely saved him from certain death, or at
least grave injury, at least twice so far. The other part of him still kept
wondering.
 Christmas came and went, and it was enjoyed by all; everyone got what they
wanted, and more. It was noticed, but not really voiced, that Brianna had
apparently been in the best position to 'give', for she bestowed dozens of
gifts upon everyone in the family. Jason kept it to himself that he'd noticed
she was not getting any bills for her credit cards, nor was she running up
against any limits. He had even snuck a peek at two of her debit-card receipts
and both of them had identical balances, after substantial withdrawals.
 On 05 January 1998, the first Monday of the year, they started their business.
J&B Consulting had no actual business for the first month after its inception,
though, because its entire staff--both people--were taking a vacation together.

 "What are you doing?" Brianna asked Jason the day after their return.
 "Oh, just checking the local papers." He dropped the box of the past month's
newspapers on his bedroom floor and started reading the earliest one.
 "What are you looking for?"
 "Nothing in particular," he lied. He didn't want to tell her that he was
checking to see if there was anything largely hideous that'd happened in their
absence, that he might be able to believe she'd known about and had taken him
to Vancouver to avoid.
 While on the coast, in addition to Vancouver, they'd gone across to the island
and touristed about; he looked up Mike Sugimoto and visited him, although he
simply introduced him to Brianna without describing her origins or his concerns
about her strange, unexplained preknowledge of events.
 Nothing really caught his eye in the news--at least, nothing that he would've
been involved in--so he pushed the box aside and looked at Brianna, who was on
the computer, checking mail. "Anything interesting there?"
 "Not tremendously," she said. "Someone wants you to add their page to your
fire department web site, and Phloem sent you a message saying how much he
appreciated the visit, and"--she paused and her cheeks briefly reddened--"um,
and he complimented me, to put it one way."
 Jason chuckled briefly. He'd have to check that one out. For that matter, he
should be the one reading his own mail, not Bri', he realized.
 In any case, they finished that, and headed downstairs for supper, which was
being eaten in front of the television, as was the norm most nights.
 During a break in the news, Jason said, "So, did anything significant happen
while we were away?"
 "Not really," Jason's father said. "Why?"
 "Oh, I just had a feeling. Any big calls, notable things, stuff like that?"
 Jason caught the briefest of glances from Brianna as his father answered him.
"Actually, not really. We've just had about a dozen medical calls to the ski
hill."
 "Uh-huh. Oh well, I guess I was wrong."
 "About?"
 "Well, Brianna's had this knack for saving my life a couple of times, and I
thought maybe the vacation was something she cooked up to save me from some
dire catastrophe back here at home."
 Jason would have died right then if Brianna's glare could kill.
 Jason's father picked up on it. "Can we talk for a moment?"
 "Fine," Jason said, smiling annoyingly at Brianna. "So long as it's okay with
you, I'll be out back."
 George followed his son outside and shut the door. "What's your problem?"
 "I beg your pardon?"
 "Why are you being so nasty to Brianna? Did something happen on your trip?"
 "What? No, I'm not being nasty. Well, not very much--okay, maybe it could be
viewed as nastiness, but she deserves it."
 "How can you possibly justify that?"
 "Well, things don't add up; she knew that flare was gonna hit the truck on
that one MVA call in December, and the next day, she deliberately made me late
for work, as if she knew that the gas station was going to blow up--"
 "If I were you, I'd consider yourself a VERY lucky man," Jason's father told
him sternly. "You've got something special going on here. Not only have you
found someone who, from where I'm standing, looks like she wants to be more
than just your friend, but she's also saved your life saved twice in recent
memory. You should be grateful to her, rather than suspicious."
 "I am, believe me. It's just that--"
 "I don't want to know about it. The way you were behaving in there tonight was
bordering on a fight, and I won't have that in my house. Understood?"
 "Yeah."
 "All right."
 They returned inside, and Jason went upstairs, inviting Bri' to join him for a
game of TR2. She quickly agreed, only if she could play every other level.

 Several days later, they were taking a break from work--their business had
taken off quite nicely, and they were being inundated with jobs--to do a bit of
errand-like things.
 "By the way, I hate to be a whiner," Jay said, "but the modifications and
repairs to the car didn't exactly turn out the way I'd expected 'em to."
 "Um.. yeah," Brianna said. "Actually, I was thinking we might fix it up to
SELL it, and get something else."
 "Sell it??" Jason echoed. "How much do you think we're gonna get for this car?
I paid $1900 for it in 1991, when it was three years old, with only 118,000
kilometers on it. Now it's at almost 400 grand--admittedly, only maybe five
thousand since you rebuilt the engine--but the body is rusted all out and the
upholstery is shot."
 "Is today Thursday??" Brianna said excitedly, looking at her watch.
 "Yup," Jason said.
 "The twelfth?"
 "All day."
 "You know what? I think I saw that one of the dealers near here is doing
special trade-in offers today," she said, not doing a very good job of hiding
her panic. "Let's go trade this one in for something new, right now."
 "Now?? The back's full of groceries!"
 "So we'll get a truck or something," she said. "Please, let's just do it."
 Jason smiled. "Did I ever tell you about the fanfic I once wrote involving you
and me building a vehicle to rival Gina's cars, out of a Dodge 1-ton?"
 "When did you write that? How come I've never seen it?"
 "It was a year or more before you got here. I deleted it all when you arrived,
'cause I figured: if I'm living with you now, why compose fantasy about it?"
 She softened a lot. "Oh, that's sweet." After a moment, panic set back in. "Is
this CHINATOWN??"
 "Yeah. I'm taking a short cut through downtown--I thought I might take you to
Rotary so you can see what the 911 center is like--"
 "Get off this road! Now!"
 "Why?" After a moment, it dawned on him. "Oh, is this another one of your
premonitions? Tell me, how does that work? Is it like an Immortal's 'buzz'?"
 "Do it!" she yelled, and wrenched the wheel away from him. The car slewed
sideways through the intersection of Center Street and Third Avenue.
 "HEY!" he bellowed, fighting for control. The tires smoked as he alternated
with the gas and brake, finally getting the car pointed in a straight line as
he narrowly missed a sea-green Ford Escort wagon that was driving dangerously
as well. "Shit! You son-of-a--"
 He didn't complete the sentence; at the same time as he saw someone exit a
convenience store, wearing an apron and holding up something long and thin and
dark, he saw the windshield crack into a spiderweb pattern and felt something
hot slam into his chest, just below his left shoulder. It threw him back in his
seat, and since he didn't yet have control, the car drifted across the lanes of
traffic and slammed into a GM barrier at Center and Second.
 "Jay! JAY!" Brianna screamed at him. She put the car in park, checked Jason to
find that he was indeed breathing, and had a semi-good pulse. She spun around
to see the Escort, looking much like their Taurus, speeding away, and the shop
owner standing there in shock, his gun limp at his side as he realized what he
had done.
 Without another thought, Brianna popped the passenger door, ran around to the
other side of the car, moved Jason into the passenger seat, and got in the
driver's side. She put the car in reverse and walked all over the accelerator;
it smoked the tires for a moment, hung up on the GM barrier, then worked itself
free and sped backwards through the intersection, ramming a courier van.
 Bri' threw it into drive, and the transmission howled in protest but shifted
eventually. She roared up Center Street at a ludicrous rate of speed.

 "Where's the nearest hospital??" she hollered at Jason, while trying to stop
the bleeding with one hand, driving with the other.
 "Where.. are we?" he said.
 "Center and 7th," she shot back rapidly.
 "No,.. what city are we in?"
 She glanced at him briefly; he was getting quite pale. She couldn't do much
with only one hand--the blood kept spurting out.
 "I see a sign," she told him. A large blue H with an arrow pointing west. She
put the car through the intersection of Center and 16th on two wheels, turning
left on a red light.  Horns honked everywhere.
 "You.. knew again, didn'cha," Jason wheezed.
 Brianna seemed to contemplate it for a moment, then said determinedly, "Yes, I
did. Listen--I'm going to tell it all to you, but you have to promise me you'll
shut up and calm down so you'll survive."
 "It's a natural instinct."
 "I've never exactly given you the full story about how I came to be here."
 "No shit," he mumbled.
 "Shut up! Help me stop your bleeding, hold your hands over the wound. Listen
to me--I was sent here to save your life."

 Jason listened as intently as he could, even though he was in a stupor; inside
his damaged body, he was fully aware of what was going on. He knew he was going
into shock, and he was vaguely cognisant of the fact that Brianna was headed in
the general direction of Foothills Hospital.
 "My sister and I found out from our chrono-protection system that you're
somehow causally linked to events in our world. I guess the distinction between
parallel universes is less than anyone ever thought. Anyway, we were able to
figure out four instances which had the potential to end your life, and thus
totally destroy our universe. One, you were to be struck by a tractor-trailer
at Highways 8 and 22, at about ten after twelve on the 24th of November. I was
supposed to arrive in your universe on the road, about 500 meters in front of
you, so you'd either stop or swerve. But something screwed up--for one thing,
the transport truck wasn't there, and for another thing, I came out of the
warp-gate at about fifty meters altitude. There was no car, no leprechauns,
Jay--just me, that's why I was knocked unconscious, 'cause I fell from such a
height all by myself."
 "What about.. the car fluids, then..?" he managed.
 She shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe the transport truck got torn apart in
the cross-dimensional rips that caused me to arrive here AND stay back in my
own universe. Anyway, the second incident we saw was you being killed by a
traffic flare that hit you in the neck on the third of December as you worked
an MVA. We both know how that turned out. The third possibility was that you
were to burn to death trying to save three victims of a tanker explosion at
your work--you stubbornly refused to leave the area until you were sure
everyone got out safely--and the last one was supposed to happen on Thursday,
the 12th of February, 1998, when your car was mistaken for the getaway car of a
couple of guys that robbed a Chinatown convenience store, and you took a rifle
blast to the chest, and died when your car crashed right after."
 "I wasn't supposed to be Frakesed," she said, still dodging traffic. "I was
just going to come into your life to save it those four times, as inobtrusively
as possible, then be sent back home again. Something must've happened--maybe an
electrical storm or something--the night I was coming to this world, that made
me get Frakesed."
 "But now," she said, after another moment, in which she almost burst into
tears, "I've grown attached to you, dammit. I really like you, Jason Alexander
Low--from the moment I set eyes on you, you stopped being a target, or an
objective, and you started to be a legitimate interest. I feel a special bond
to you--as if maybe there was a bigger reason that I got Frakesed when I came
here. Maybe you and I were MEANT to be together, Jay. If I'm here to stay,
there's no one in this universe I'd rather spend the rest of my life with than
you."
 "How fast'r you goin'?"
 "What?" She was caught off-guard by Jason's almost nonsensical question. She
looked down: the speedometer, like nearly everything else, had been damaged in
the crash(es). It was bouncing wildly between 100 and 180 kilometers per hour.
"I don't know," she told him.
 "I'm start'n.. to feel.. like shit," he said.
 "We can't be too far away now; hang in there!"
 "Ten.. station's.. by.. SAIT.."
 "What?"
 "The.. new.. ten.."
 "Jason! Wake up!" She took her hand off his wound long enough to shake him,
but it wasn't doing any good. She looked up and, just then, saw what he meant.
 They were passing by the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, and just up
the street, on the south side, was a large building. It had a temporary sign on
the sidewalk beside it that proclaimed it as the City of Calgary Emergency
Services Station #10, construction completed in Summer 1997.
 Brianna eliminated the retractable wooden barriers that separated her from the
firehall driveway by driving right through them. She screeched to a stop in
front of the building, horn blasting away.

TWO DAYS LATER

 The first thing Jason saw when he awoke was Brianna's troubled-looking face,
staring out the window beside his bed.
 "What's the weather like?" he groggily managed.
 She was startled; then overjoyed, as she realized he was not only alive, but
still had his faculties about him too. She went to the door and called down the
hallway, and in moments, his family and a doctor were there with he and Bri'.
 He answered a flurry of questions from his parents, sister, and brother-in-
law, did his best to give the answers the doctor wanted to hear, and then
turned to regard Brianna there, smiling, tears on her face.
 "Do you remember anything?" she asked timidly.
 "All of it," he said slowly, still having to work hard to speak. "I..
appreciate you finally.. coming clean with me."
 She squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry I didn't do it sooner. I thought it'd be
better if I'd just left it and tried to forget it, at least until you were
safe."
 "Are your sisters.. safe now?"
 "They should be," she nodded. "We searched extensively, and only identified
four crises. Now that those four've passed, although not the way I WANTED them
to, they'll be able to deal."
 "Good." He seemed to pause, to gather up steam; actually, he was trying to
accumulate some nerve. "While you were driving.. me to the hospital.. you said
something about.. how your view of me.. changed once you got to.. know me."
 "Yes?" she said.
 He had to pause; the previous sentence was a challenge for him physically, but
emotionally, the next four words were a big step, too.
 He smiled broadly as he squeezed her hand and said, "The feeling.. is mutual."

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                                   THE END