Fanfic - "Reflections"
Title: Reflections
Author: TellMeMore90
Fandom: Primeval
Characters/Pairings: Gideon and Matt Anderson (some mention of Connor/Abby and Philip)
Words: 3000 (ish)
Rating/Warnings: PG
Disclaimer: Primeval and its characters belong to Impossible Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended.
Spoilers: Everything up to episode 4.3
Prompt:When Matt walked away from Gideon in episode 4.3, what was Gideon thinking?
Summary: An exploration of Matt and Gideon's mission and how the winners (in this case initially Philip Burton) re-write history to suit their purposes, fulfil their desires and hide their mistakes. Also, addresses Helen Cutter's access to future technology, how the future predators and other giant creatures could have evolved in such a short space of time, and the sudden and cataclysmic seismic events as suggested by the landscape in Episodes 3.8 and 3.10. I hope it all makes sense.
Gideon POV
Matt Anderson finally answered his phone, as Jess directed him to the anomaly call at a local theatre. He looked apologetically at Gideon. He didn't want to leave his father but duty called and one thing Gideon had raised him to always do was his duty.
"Forget about me Matt." Gideon was trying to hide the emotions that were making self-control difficult. "Do your job."
Gideon looked sadly into the distance, his mind on the departing figure of his son. He knew he was dying and had little time left. He wanted to spend it with his son, but knew too well the importance of the Mission. He could not be responsible for diverting Matt - it was imperative that Matt succeed, for all their sakes.
Gideon's thoughts drifted back to when he was Matt's age with a young family. The world was already dying, even before it all went to hell. The skies were increasingly toxic, clean water was becoming scarce, crops rarely grew outside of hydroponic farms and people were already burrowing underground to avoid the poisonous surface.
The weather had been declining for decades. The link to the disappearance of all anomalies except the Great Spot over what had once been London had been accepted for some time. The atmospheric disturbance in the immediate area of the Great Spot had caused the wholesale destruction of that ancient city. A satellite office of the ARC had remained to carry out analysis and research of the Great Spot swirling overhead, but the city was largely abandoned.
The primary function of the ARC was how to neutralize the Great Spot or at least to mitigate its negative influence on the atmosphere. Mapping the historical locations of the anomalies and investigating how the Great Spot had come into being took the skills of the top experts at the ARC.
Philip Burton had died childless nearly a century before. He was the acknowledged expert on anomalies, immersing himself in their study and harnessing their energy with new technologies of his devising. He had survived the lab accident that killed his assistant Connor Temple and Philip's concubine, Abigail Maitland, but the injuries sustained claimed his life just a few years later. To secure his legacy, Burton had commissioned brain mapping technology in the hope that one day, he could be re-born.
A cloning program was started to create a new Philip Burton. Progress on the new technology was slow and took decades to become advanced enough for human cloning. The first clones were physically identical to the master copy, but were almost blank canvasses mentally, capable of obeying without question only the most rudimentary commands. A neural clamp had been created to control them, before a more efficient voice control system was established. Still they were little more than puppets.
The breakthrough came when a clone was created implanted with all Philip Burton's knowledge plus all the expertise of other ARC specialists. Adam Burton was beyond a genius. The problem was that he had been grown with no humanity, no compassion and no ethics or morals. None of these traits were deemed important to his experiments to stop the Great Spot.
He built a machine to create a manmade anomaly, reasoning that this would destabilize the Great Spot causing both anomalies to implode and close. No argument for more analysis of the simulations, or for consideration of the possible repercussions for humanity were heeded. Adam went ahead anyway and created his anomaly.
The ramifications were catastrophic. Not only did the combination of two massive anomalies cause huge earthquakes and violent volcanic eruptions across the planet. Their combination caused a new mega anomaly to open, with satellite anomalies on all continents. Analysis showed that the mega anomaly would only be sustained for about six days before closing and hopefully allowing what remained of the Earth's crust to stabilize. There had been no other anomalies in decades so the technology to lock it had been lost and there was no time to devise a new device.
Unfortunately the Anomaly Dating Calculator (antique technology invented by Philip Burton and stored in the ARC museum) showed the mega anomaly had opened to approximately one million years in the future.
The guards of heavily armed soldiers were unable to prevent the hordes of diverse giant creatures that poured through from the future in search of prey. The worst of these predators were quick, strong, intelligent and capable of camouflaging themselves like a chameleon. They hunted by sound rendering conventional weapons, even the EMDs, virtually useless. No continent was spared the wholesale slaughter as highly evolved giant insects and predators from Earth's future ran rampant across the surface whilst burrowing creatures attacked the less protected underground bunkers.
The mega anomaly and its many satellites did close as predicted and the seismic activity did abate, but the damage was done. The atmosphere continued to deteriorate exacerbated by the volcanic activity. It was now toxic beyond repair.
The ARC had failed spectacularly. The clone, Adam Burton, could not help as a distraught soldier had put a bullet through Adam's inhuman brain after learning of the loss of his family when a large chunk of South East England literally collapsed into a kilometre deep hole created when the Eurasian tectonic plate sheered in two.
The only possible solution to save humanity and the planet was the past. To discover where it all went wrong and try to prevent it. The ARC scientists already knew the anomalies were a natural phenomenon linked to the periodic reversing of the Earth's polarity. That they became more common as the reversal, or the Convergence as it was dubbed, approached. They believed someone had meddled with the anomalies and stopped Convergence, so instead of the poles reversing the magnetic forces caused significant disruption to the atmosphere and seriously destabilised weather patterns. At some point around this time the Great Spot was created.
A plan was devised, teams identified and years of ruthless training began. Due to the constant battle against the predators, the ARC only had the time and power to send three trained teams back to different points in history to pinpoint and prevent the destruction of the planet. Devices were created to open a controlled anomaly to a precise time and location and then close it once incursion was complete. No other influence on the timelines was allowed. The Mission was to identify and neutralise the threat then terminate themselves as their own time would no longer exist and they could not risk further contamination of the time line. No personal interaction with the indigenous population or non-essential tampering with the timeline was permitted.
Gideon Anderson and his son Matt went back the farthest, to 2008. The goal, to have infiltrated the ARC and achieved a position of authority in the ARC hierarchy within one year. If anyone was tampering with anomalies, the ARC was the best place to track them. All relevant historical and biographical data was sent with Matt disguised as a period wrist watch. So much information had been lost during the upheavals of the preceding century that little was known of that time.
Shaking his head sadly, Gideon brought his thoughts back to the present.
So far the Mission was progressing to schedule, but they were no nearer to identifying how or who would destroy the future. Gideon felt that this was looking increasingly like the right time, but it was taking too long to identify who was responsible and Matt risked getting side-tracked by his growing familiarity with the ARC team. Gideon would have to use what little time remained to him to keep Matt focussed.
However his familiarity could yet prove useful. The discrepancies in Philip Burton's personal biography were beginning to look suspicious - Abigail Maitland was very obviously in an established relationship with Connor Temple. Was she really the type to abandon him so quickly for the older man? Matt would have to look into that. If Burton could lie about that, what else could he lie about?
Gideon turned and watched his son's back disappear around the side of the house. He knew that both of them had already sacrificed their lives for the Mission. At least Gideon could die and be buried in this still fertile and beautiful world. His son would continue, isolated and alone, until he either completed the Mission, or died trying. Humanity and the Earth demanded nothing less.
tbc
Matt POV
Matt walked away from his father towards the house. The garden was in full bloom - the scent was intoxicating. Insects buzzed and birds sang. My god there were so many birds. Matt smiled as he thought of the beauty that surrounded his father in his last days. So much life and beauty after so much death and destruction.
Matt knew that this was a suicide mission. That neither of them were supposed to survive, could be allowed to survive whether they succeeded or failed. And they had to succeed.
His thoughts drifted to his mother. She was beautiful once with her huge brown eyes and chestnut brown curls. He’d seen a picture of her in her youth, before it got really bad. Before Adam Burton had finally destroyed everything. She looked happy in that picture - full of life and full of colour.
After Burton had unleashed hell on the planet, their young family had retreated to a government bunker along with many other military families. It was reinforced and carved into the rock so was protected from the burrowing creatures. The entrance was well guarded and constantly patrolled. An EMD killing zone also protected the entrance - nothing without a bio-tag could get through alive.
No-one went outside except on heavily armoured recon and training missions. The air was foul, but the storms that blew up without warning would kill you if you were unprotected. And then there were the predators. Most of the carnivorous insects from the future had moved into the remains of the cities. They’d followed the few humans who were trying to survive in the subterranean remains of car parks and train stations. The humans didn’t last long.
The others were different. They were so unlike any animal seen before they were just called the predators. They seemed to be able to survive in any conditions, even the toxic maelstrom that the surface had become. When they couldn’t find humans and any of the few remaining animals to feed upon, they fed upon each other. They bred quickly so it was an unending food supply.
Matt barely remembered his life before the bunker. He was a small child when Adam Burton unleashed hell and they packed what little they could carry and went underground. To avoid the worst of the seismic activity, the bunker was in Ireland. Matt didn’t know what an Ireland was, but he knew that the people from there sounded different to his mum and dad.
He couldn’t remember sunlight. He’d never known fresh running water. When he had come into the past and felt rain for the first time he was at first terrified that it would burn him like acid, and then he had stood outside, in the middle of the street for over an hour just letting the water wash over him and soak though his clothes - it was heaven.
Life in the bunker was comfortable enough. All their nutritional and educational requirements were met. They were taught to fight and to survive. The adults rarely spoke of the time before. It was too disturbing - too hard a memory to deal with. To know that you were witnessing the end of human civilisation and the end of almost all life on Earth. The planet would survive even if it was a barren rock. Presumably at some point it would repair itself sufficiently for a new era of giant creatures to exist - after all they had come through the anomaly from the future. It made sense that the creatures that would survive and thrive would be cave dwelling insects and bats.
Slowly the life drained out of his mother. First his baby sister succumbed to an illness. He was never told what. She just wasted away. He remembered his mother crying almost constantly and his father, initially consoling and then despairing of her grief and leaving her alone. His mother with her rosy cheeks, pink lips and chestnut hair slowly became grey. Even her skin became grey from lack of sunlight. One day he came home from school full of details of the latest hand to hand combat techniques and the wonder of being allowed to grow his own bean plant in the hydroponics lab. His father took him in his arms and looked sadly into the small boy’s face.
“You have to be strong for me Matt, can you do that?”
“’Course dad. I’m the strongest in my class, teacher said so.”
“Good boy.” Gideon patted his son on the head and ruffled his hair. “We are going to go on a mission.” Matt perked up with excitement. “Not yet, not for a very long time. It’s a very important mission and will take lots of training. Do you think you can do that Matt?”
“’Course dad. Is it really very important?”
“Yes son. We are going to try to save the planet.” Matt’s face lit up “Wow, brilliant! And I’m going too? I’m gonna be like a super hero? You wait till I tell Harry.”
“No Matt, you can’t tell Harry or anyone, ever. That’s the first rule. Never tell. You and I do this alone. The only people who know are our special trainers. No one else must ever know and you must never tell. Do you understand?”
“Yes dad. Errrr, dad, what about mum? Am I allowed to tell her? It might cheer her up.”
“No son. I’ve already told your mother. She was a little upset so probably best to leave her be for a while. We won’t be going on our mission for several years. We have to wait until you’re all grown up before we can go. She’ll get used to it.”
As he rounded the side of the house and headed for his SUV he remembered the cry of anguish when his father found his mother’s suicide note. She had taken an overdose and slashed her wrists. There was so much red for someone who had become so grey.
She had wished her son well with the Mission and gave him all her love. She knew it would succeed because he was her boy and was brilliant. From then on it was always referred to as the Mission with a capital ‘m’ just as his mother had written it. His mother’s body was sent to the recycling plant. There were no flowers, but Matt did place his little green bean sprout in his mother’s hands before her body was taken away.
Now he was losing his father. Years of exposure to the toxic skies had ruined his health. At least he would die amidst all this beauty he was trying so desperately to save. Matt would have him buried in one of those wild wood cemeteries so he was surrounded by trees and life. Gideon would love to know that he was nourishing the Earth.
Nothing would get in the way of his completing the Mission. He was certain that this was the time when things began, he just needed to know who. Connor Temple was perhaps the one person who had the knowledge and expertise, but he certainly didn’t have the heart to do something like this. He was too good a soul to wreak death and destruction on humanity. But he was easily led and had been stuck in the Cretaceous for a year. He could perhaps be manipulated by someone in a position of authority.
In his auto-biography Philip Burton had called Connor his assistant, but had called Abby Maitland his concubine. He obviously looked at Abby with lust, but she seemed committed to Connor - the bond they had forged in the Cretaceous seemed so strong and from what little he had seen of her she was fiercely loyal - the type who mated for life. If that was the case then Connor Temple was very obviously her choice, not Philip Burton.
He was beginning to wonder if Philip had lied about that relationship. If he had lied about that, what else was he lying about?
As Matt got into the SUV and started towards the anomaly site at the theatre, he started to plan how to get closer to Abby. To find out where her affections lay. He felt increasingly that Abigail Maitland may well be the key to everything.
The End