The Elsewhere Files

Initial Folly - Mission One

Initial Folly – Mission One

Camera opens on Kiera sitting in a restaurant booth. A typical Americana style twenty-four hour diner with cheap plastic booths. A menu is discarded to the side, a plate with a half-eaten breakfast on it and a steaming hot coffee frame a dog-eared and battered notebook with messy writing in it. The random dates at the top of the pages indicate that this notebook is Kiera’s journal of adventures traveled. Although the writing is messy, the camera hears an overlay of Kiera’s inner thoughts.

[Kiera- as narrator]: “We’re about eight days in to mission one, about two months after Elsewhere incidents started to occur. I am now one of those damn G-men tag-alongs that I used to mock on tv. No one can tell me why yet, but I can feel these pockets of broken reality. And the people! There were so many of them like Maria. People who didn’t belong in our version of the world. People who suddenly found themselves in a country just like one in their own version of the world, and yet somehow different. None of the phone numbers they knew called the people who should belong to them. No one knew the people they knew and no one recognized them in return. But worst of all, for people like Maria, they found themselves different here. Maria Arruda, that woman whom had finally propelled me down this path, was superhuman in her usual feats of strength. But in trade off she had no clue how her sons and husband were doing, worried about her elsewhere. Elsewhere. It’s everywhere, and inside some of us who are like Maria but different. I think I’m one of them. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. I suddenly find myself with these people inside my head with me. It’s not like I hear their thoughts. But like for a split second, I lived their life, and then I’m back to myself. At first I could brush it off, as if I was just creating characters in my head. But it got stronger. And then JD…After that I was too out of it to know what was real or not anymore. So I just decided to go one day. I asked myself why not and had nothing to actually hold me back. Once that thought occurred to me, I already found myself walking out the apartment complex. I didn’t feel the cold at first, I was too dazed still to really understand that I was getting frost bite as I watched someone really do those crazy things my head had been showing me. Long story short I ended up being one of a select few whom belonged here in this reality, but were changed by the Elsewhere.  Major I-have-a-massive-stick-up-my-ass Crowe was off finding us a hotel room to overnight in."

Camera zooms back out, the narrative voice dropping away as Major Crowe strides back into the diner. The waitress that had been ignoring Kiera gives the Major a bold look over and comes over to ask if he needs anything. The Major just shakes his head no and ignores the waitress until she leaves. He sits across from Kiera, trying to read her words upside down.

[Kiera]: "You're still not too good with the privacy thing are you?" her voice is sarcastic and she closes the notebook.

[Crowe]: "Need to know basis remember Sir? I've been given instructions to keep you safe, and that means psychologically as well as physically. You're our tracker for these people and places, none of the technology is as accurate as your best guess usually is." his voice is plain, words spoken as if he considered her a child.

[Kiera]: glares at the Major "Makes me sound like a bloody drug dog when you say it like that. And don't worry, if I start thinking that the demon in my sock drawer has really good ideas for world domination, I'll let you know."

[Crowe]: seems unbothered by Kiera's attitude "You don't have to like me prying into your affairs, but it's for your own safety so I would appreciate it if you didn't fight with me on this Sir." the words are said with patience, as if this is an old arguement between them already.

[Kiera]: crosses her arms over her chest, looking out the diner window "I'm fine. You're just gonig to have to learn to take me at my word." her words are strained, as if she's forcing them out through her teeth.