Past The Edge of Reason

The new desk was the most obvious difference. Roughly in the same spot (because they could only do so much with the shape of the house) but so much longer, it was a slightly curved slab of deep blue glass on blackened steel legs and more than big enough for the two pairs of black leather executive chairs on each side, the four holoprojectors on the surface, and the separate projector dedicated for EOS’ exclusive use, in lieu of her having an agent portrait. A shared space for work of all types, it didn’t dominate the room like the old desk, but it brought it together while at the same time functioning as a much more collaborative ‘mission control’. ‘And now that we can share the desk, there’s no more being banished to the kitchen for classes for Alan.’ Scott smiled as his eyes lit upon the astronaut, currently sitting on the other end of the desk next to EOS’ active projector as he, Brains, MAX, Gordon, and Grandma chatted with the AI. 

Yale had only put up a faint protest when Alan switched to a 90% online program; it had been impressed on them that the optics wouldn’t be in their favour if they denied iR’s astronaut what they allowed for any other student with non-standard needs. Now he did his course work at the desk, usually alongside at least one or two other people doing reports, TI stuff, or other life admin. If Alan needed peace and quiet, UnNamed’s office had been turned into a dedicated study space with two desks and an entire wall covered in blackboards: Alan wasn’t the only college student now. 

Scott smiled anew at the memory of getting the acceptance letter from University of Melbourne and their world-leading mathematics program. It’d taken some doing and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know why John had quietly booked meetings - in-person meetings - with certain faculty members there, but he was three months into his PhD program and the equations for his thesis on the computational prediction of flight characteristics on boundary layers in hypersonic flight already covered half the study wall. Scott felt his smile broaden. The feel of Hagoromo chalk in his hand, seeing those crisp lines of theory drawn into the physical world, it was such a good feeling. ‘I wonder if Mom ever felt the same way, when she was working on her theories and equations?’ 

That topic, Mom and her work, had become a long-term project for the family, collectively digging through the layers of history, finding what she’d worked on and correcting the records so that Lucille Tracy nee Evans’ brilliance was allowed to shine again. It was harder than they’d anticipated - they had to prove that she was involved in a significant way - but bit by bit, with every cache they located and combed through, they were all chipping away at the gloating hate UnNamed had coated their mother's brilliance in and bringing her name back into the light. 

‘Brains isn’t being left out either,’ was Scott’s thought. So many projects of his had been publicised under generic titles like ‘TI’s engineering team’. The process of correcting that record was so very satisfying too. 

Though part of his attention was on the past, Scott turned the bulk of it back to the present. 

Other things had been updated as well, changes made to better reflect them and their tastes. The fireplace that they never used had been removed and on the lounge side the wooden wall had been extended over the gap so they could have all the agent portraits up. On the other side the billiards table had been moved over so they could turn the little reading nook there into a bigger library space with beanbags, a coffee table and another two chairs.

More changes had been made to better reflect them and their needs. The ring of sunken couches were now a uniform forest green with dark yellow cushions, the carpet was a medium grey to match the metal strips in the floor, and the bookcases had been repainted white. The piano hadn’t moved, but Virgil now had an easel, work table, and a stool permanently living next to it, the oaken frame holding whatever his current project was. Right now it was a rendition of a storm at sunset, based on a photo that’d been forwarded to him by Cloud. 

‘No more hiding in his studio, keeping his art away from that man’s criticism veiled as critique.’ Scott was careful to not let his poker-face crack as he looked at his younger brother, seated behind his beloved piano but not playing it. Grey threaded Virgil’s hair now, mute testimony to the physical, mental, and emotional strain he’d been through. He’d regained a lot of his bulk, but he’d retained the scars on his shoulders, back, and hips from the exo-suit chafing through his uniform. Those scars weren’t going to fade for a long time, if ever, right alongside the wear and tear on his body from not being allowed the time to rest and recover properly. 

A couple of years ago that would have touched off a grim spiral of ‘it’s my fault/I should have been better’, but Scott knew better now, both in his mind and in his heart. ‘And with Rigby and Dosela staying on - and the GDF properly doing their job with the smaller stuff - he’ll get the recovery time he needs, we’ll all get that recovery time,’ Scott reminded himself. Plans were well underway to expand their roster even further. Alan was working on recruiting Conrad from the Space Hub to join him both on Three and spelling John on Five, Penelope, Parker, Kyrano, and Kayo were looking for another security specialist, the Mechanic - Mark - was going to come back to the Island once his contract with Spectrum was finished, and Colonel White had promised to forward on any names of people who he thought would better suit iR than they did Spectrum. ‘Really, we should have done this years ago, but he wanted to ‘keep it in the family’ for ‘security reasons’ so he could hide what he was really up to.’ Scott shook off that thought and continued his tally of changes. 

Upstairs, the mezzanine had been turned into a hangout space with more comfortable chairs and couches, a media centre, and other little touches that separated the ‘work’ space from the ‘relax’ space - a much needed measure that let them be ‘off duty’ and stand down, rather than always being ‘on’. He could see Rigby up there right now, standing at ease, with Dosela perched on a chair beside him. 

Those two had been absolutely invaluable as they rebuilt International Rescue. While Rigby helped field the innumerable requests for information about this and that, made the calls that needed to be made, and reassured anxious politicians and bureaucrats, Dosela had spent most of her time on the tools, helping with the much needed repairs that all the Thunderbirds and their equipment had needed after the punishment they’d taken to bolster UnNamed’s image in the public space. 

Kyrano had been equally invaluable. 

His calm and steadying presence had been an absolute rock through, well, everything, as they straightened out the mess that UnNamed had left behind him. That first week after the bonfire at the beach, he’d had some private worries that Kyrano would go back into ‘retirement’ at Kinabalu and they’d never see him again. He had gone back, two days later as promised, but to his (and everyone else’s utter relief) it had only been to pack up his house and resign.

The thought of the beach also reminded Scott of the biggest change they’d made to the Island, and this one was outside. 

On the eastern side of the Island, the beach huts meant to help camouflage what they were actually up to were all gone, replaced by a half on the water, half underwater villa, flanked by a hangar and landing strip for Gordon’s private plane and FAB1. Gordon and Penny had both decided that enough time had been lost to UnNamed and they’d been married for almost a month and a half now. While Gordon would have been happy with a signing at the registry office, he knew that Penelope had always wanted a 'proper' wedding. Which he was more than happy to give that to her. But the odds of someone doing something stupid or hateful at something that public were extremely high, so he’d asked for help from the sneakiest people he knew: The Angels. 

They planned it all out: a fake wedding booked at St. George's in London, while a much smaller and private ceremony was set up at Canterbury Cathedral. Which was very convenient since it was literally in Foxleyheath's backyard. The only thing that Gordon had asked for was October first, that way the reception at the Manor could go for three full days.

The entire thing had gone off without a hitch. With the decoy wedding to distract them, the press and tabloids were caught badly out of place, a group of UnNamed’s supporters who’d planned to crash it were quietly rounded up by the local police - they’d found out later that Cloud had tipped them off - and to their utter relief the Mysterons had completely ignored the event.

Gordon and Penny now split their time between their two home bases. It wasn’t as seamless as anyone would have liked, but they made it work. ‘I don’t think it would have been possible without Dosela covering Gordon and the GDF taking care of the small stuff,’ Scott mused, ‘but now it is, and I’m so glad for them.’

Scott’s eyes rested on the family matriarch next. The past year had aged Grandma physically, he could see that, and it’d caused her wounds that she refused to speak about with the rest of them, but she had also completely rejected all and any ideas about her stepping back fully from TI and iR and ‘properly’ retiring. Scott could feel his smile as he remembered that day, when he and John had carefully broached the idea and she had crossed her arms and given them that look. They were all, he knew, cut from the same cloth. There was work to do and people who needed help, and that was that - and he’d been so very glad of her refusal in those first few weeks with everything they had to untangle. 

Sorting out the legalities of TI had had the potential to be a nightmare, but thanks to Grandma, John Svenson and Lord Hugh’s coup, taking that back had been relatively simple. What had been a nightmare had been the legalities around iR, who owned the Island, the incorporated charity that iR operated under, and very importantly, who owned the Thunderbirds. 

The first time around - when the Zero-X happened - probate, inheritance tax, and jurisdictions had kept TI’s cadre of very expensive lawyers very busy, especially when it came to fending off the GDF, hungry for access to technology that was light years ahead of their own. Thanks to that ‘practice run’, this time it was much easier but just as expensive. What also helped was that everything had been willed to Virgil - probably, as someone had observed, because UnNamed had thought Virgil was the obedient one who could be easily controlled by Lee, which also meant that Lee would be able to control John through Virgil. 

The general suspicion was that UnNamed would have willed everything to Lee, but if he had there would have been a very solid case to contest the will and no one had any doubts about John’s desire and ability to make things extremely difficult for all parties involved if that had come to pass.  

What also had been a legal nightmare had been Brains’ situation as a stateless person. Just the initial hearings had needed multiple legal experts from five different countries and months of work just to figure out where to start, much less see if Bangladesh or any of the surrounding countries would retroactively grant him citizenship. ‘And it would have been years of battling it out, plus the problems from him knowingly travelling as a stateless person when he came on rescues or to the ranch or to visit QWRK, if someone - or probably several someones - hadn’t stepped in.’ Scott had his suspicions about who exactly had been having quiet words with certain people - he hadn’t even known that the paperwork had been filed in the first place - but when the email had come from the Aotearoa New Zealand Ministry of Immigration with an approved residency permit and an accelerated track to citizenship… well, it wasn’t something any of them had looked at too closely. Gift horse and all that. ‘MAX was a surprise though.’ 

Roughly a week after they came back to the Island, the proverbial dust had settled enough for Brains and MAX to reveal the latter’s status as a true AI, his nascent sentience pushed into full awakening by contact with EOS. The elder AI had preened over her part in it all, the rest of them had welcomed MAX with open arms, and John had a quiet word with his companion about ‘please stop aggravating other computer systems to the point they wake up just so they can boot you out’. 

The thought of John had him looking at the family spaceman, right now perched on one of Three’s launch chairs and scrutinising the room and everyone in it. Once again, Scott was careful to try and keep his emotions off his face, but his actual level of success would always be up for questioning: very little escaped Thunderbird Five.

Like Virgil, their durance had exacted a heavy price from John. The visible signs were obvious - he was still leaner than anyone liked and flecks of white were starting to bleach his copper-red hair - but it was the invisible ones that concerned Scott the most. 

Immediately after the bonfire night they’d grounded John for a solid two months, knowing that his prolonged stay in space with insufficient rest, barely sufficient time to exercise, and completely insufficient nutrition would have a cost to pay. It was a good thing they had grounded him because roughly a week in, John had had a full collapse. He didn’t need to run on adrenaline, spite, and stubbornness any longer, so his body had pulled the plug on all normal operations and enforced a solid block of recovery time. ‘That was a hell of a fright,’ Scott smoothed away the grimace before it could form, ‘but we got through it. It meant changes for him, for all of us, but we got through it.

The aftermath of that collapse meant that John now had to have an enforced one-week-on-two-week-off rotation on Five, swapping duties with Three and EOS filling in as needed, and John’s first day ‘downstairs’ was spent with a light exo-frame under his clothes to support him through a transition that used to be easy for him.

All the thoughts about what had happened also drew Scott’s mind to the interview he’d finally given Kat just over a month ago. He knew he’d unconsciously tensed up because Kayo’s arm slipped around him and “<Beloved, peace,>” was murmured softly to him, just loud enough for his ears and his alone. 

The interview… it’d been rough, but Kat (who’d obviously done a lot of research before conducting the interview) had approached the topic with a sensitivity that he deeply appreciated. She’d continued to broadcast her series on UnNamed, and the interview had been the cap to it all, designed to answer the question of ‘how did he get away with it for so long and why were people willing to look the other way?’ 

It was just a simple change of tack and it made the topic so much easier for him to talk about it. The onus was put on the abuser, not the abused, and because it was the cap to the series he was able to talk about generalities, not the specifics that the audience already knew far too many details about as it was. So the interview had been all about the weaponised charm, the masks that UnNamed used to hide behind, the Jekyll and Hyde dynamic of the public face and the private one, the isolation executed with surgical precision, the removal of his victims’ ability to access help, the control of finances to keep them supplicant, the manipulation, gaslighting, and half-truths, how usually it took multiple attempts before a victim could leave, and most importantly how the abuser groomed their audience just as much as they groomed their victim to ensure that their narrative was the one that was believed.

‘If it helps one person,’ Scott reminded himself, ‘if it helps one person escape, if it helps one person understand, it’ll all be worth it if it saves one person from what Mom went through, from what we went through… from what I went through.’ 

What they went through… Scott used that as a leaping off point onto a completely different train of thought. Re-skilling for their Thunderbirds… that’d been harder than he’d thought, but getting back into One… ‘it wasn’t quite an ‘I’ve come home’ moment, I’ve changed, she’s changed too… but it felt so right. And seeing Alan’s face when he finally got back into space after far too long…’ Scott knew his smile was wistful. ‘Worth it. That moment made all that pain absolutely worth it. He’s back where he belongs, we’re all back where we belong.’ 

And with that, he knew it was the time to ask the question that’d been lingering around them all for months now, lurking on the edges of every training session, every simulation, and every practice launch.

Scott straightened up (but he didn’t let go of his fiancee) and the room immediately fell silent, every eye and sensor on him.

“Are we ready?” 

Scott’s question hung in the air for a moment as everyone looked at each other. 

Alan got to his feet, chin lifted and every inch Thunderbird Three. “We’re ready.”  

“F.A.B.” Turning to the projector beside him, Scott keyed in Colonel Casey’s number. 

Her image coalesced over the projector a moment later: she’d been expecting this call. “Commander, good to hear from you. What’s the news?” 

His moment of meditation was cut short though.

“How the hell did that get there?” He sat up with a jolt, causing the chair to flip forward. There on what should have been a pristine glass ceiling, maintained by a small army of external cleaning bots, was a bright yellow. Scott squinted to be sure, but there was absolutely no mistaking it.

Leaning down to grab an orange off the end of a sun lounger, tossing it up in the air and catching it once before launching it at the splash of colour darting the length of the pool. There was a “plunk” noise and the sun kissed head disappeared under the water. Scott would have been concerned if the same head hadn’t bobbed back up almost instantly like a cork from a bottle. 

“What was that for?” a waterlogged voice asked, not exactly offended, more a request for clarification. A cynical soul would suggest that he was trying to find out exactly which particular crime he was currently being tried for.

Scott simply pointed to the sloping roof of the main living area.

Gordon wiped the wet hair away from his face and peered up at the roofline.

“Huh?”

Another empathic pointing finger, now with added eyebrow raise.

Gordon doggy paddled over to the poolside, and crossed his arms over the sun warmed stone.

“Ok, so is it a book, a film, a song? How many syllables?”

Scott folded his arms.

“Maybe a TV show?”

“On the roof, Gordon, why is it on the roof?”

“Genuinely, I have zero clue what you are talking about right now. Are you feeling ok there bro? Is the stress getting to you? Not feeling dizzy or smelling burnt toast are you?”

Scott stopped abruptly in the middle of the hardwood floor, and pointed skyward.

“That!” he said, all punctuation audible.

Gordon shielded his eyes with one hand to peer upward, towel valiantly clasped at his waist with the other hand.

“Is that…?”

“Yes. And I want to know why!?” Scott had folded his arms again.

“Yeah, why is that up there?”

“Thats what I’d like to know!”

“Oh great, well, you know, let me know when you find out, cos that’s weird.”

“Gordon, they are your swim shorts, that’s why I am asking you! Why are they up there?”

“Me? Why would I put them up there?” Gordon gave Scott a blank look.

“I Don't Know! But it's hardly out of character.” Scott practically spat out between gritted teeth.

“That is derogatory stereotyping Scott, I’m surprised at you, I expected better!”

“Gordon….!” was all but growled.

“I promise you Scott, I have no idea how my trunks ended up on the roof.” Gordon held one palm up to underline his oath

Scott raised one doubting eyebrow.

“I Promise! But, if you’re offering to crack out the jet pack or the grapple packs to go up and investigate, I’d quite like them back, they’re my favorites. Thanks!” Gordon clapped Scott on the shoulder and strolled back to the pool.

“GOOOORRRDDDOON!” Scott's cry hit more octaves than anyone would have possible.

By some quirk of vocal projection and focused rage, it was even audible underwater, and Gordon came to the surface spluttering.

“I swear I never touched it, it wasn’t me, I’ve never ordered glitter, I don’t even know what it is and I haven’t been anywhere near your snack stash!” By the time he had swiped the worst of the water out of his eyes, and pulled himself out of the end of the pool, Scott was already standing ramrod straight in the middle of the lounge, pointing rigidly towards the ceiling.

“Oh,” Gordon trotted over, leaving puddles of water behind him, and squinted up to where his brother was pointing. “Nope, nothing to do with me, I swear.”

Scott directed the full force of his glare at his little brother.

“Thats not even mine! Why am I getting the laser death stare?”

“Are you trying to tell me that you had nothing to do with the sneaker currently on the roof?”

“Yeah, that's exactly what I am saying, it’s not even mine.”

“It’s yellow!” Scott let the accusation land.

“So’s the sun but you don’t see me claiming that!” Gordon exclaimed. “Theyre hightops, totally Alans.”

“But why would he put it up there?” Scott asked.

“Why would anyone?! But I’m still getting blamed! This is targeted discrimination Scott, I expected better of you of all people” Gordon tried his best disapproving look.

“You know the guilt thing only works when John does it.” Scott was unaffected.

Gordon shrugged, “It was worth a shot. I still had nothing to do with it though.”

“Fine,” Scott huffed, then fixed him with his best strong stare, “but if I find out it was you…..there will be ramifications.” He jabbed an accusing finger at Gordon's chest, but held back before making contact since Gordon was still dripping wet from the pool.

“Got it! Loud and clear” Gordon threw a sharp salute “…… So how are you gonna get it down?”

“Who says I’m gonna?”

“You clearly are, I give it six hours max before it gets to you” Gordon laughed.