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“How long was it until you realised I was on annual leave?”
Silence.
Maybe he still hadn’t realised.
He grumbled something I couldn’t hear. “What do you want? This better be good.”
I scoffed. “I’ll give you good. I’ve just been handed the keys to the Darwin station. The woman that gave them to me quit, or finally retired, I don’t even know. The equipment here is from the ’90s. Hell, there’s an anemometer so old I think it came off the Endeavour. Do you hear what I’m saying? I can’t work here. I never agreed to work here. I came here this morning to see if I could use the in house system to recalibrate my gear and maybe save some of the data I collected that got fried from when we gotstruck by lightningin the middle of the damn jungle, but I can now see that was an exercise in futility because the computer system here is straight out of a time machine, and you’ll have to excuse my language but it’s so fucking damn hot here my brain is melting!”
There was a long beat of silence. “What the hell are you talking about, Overton?”
“Brian, listen to me,” I said through clenched teeth. “What you’re gonna do is find out what the fuck is going on. Call Sydney, call Canberra. Call the fucking prime minister if you have to. Get Doreen back here, today, and find out who the hell is the replacement officer up here.”
“Who’s Doreen?”
“She’s the six-foot woman with a shaved head and a baseball bat that just gave me her keys to the Darwin station, that’s who! Now get off your arse and start making phone calls!”
I disconnected the call, my chest heaving. “The incompetence,” I muttered.
Tully took my hand, grinning. “You’re awesome, you know that?”
My head was swimming and my vision blurred. Tully put me in Bruce’s seat and patted my cheek. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “I just wanted to check my data.”
“I know,” he said.
Fucker was still smiling.
“Glad you find this whole situation amusing.”
He laughed, now on his knees before me, and cupped my face. “Are you okay?”
I shook my head and shrugged. I had no clue what I was.
“You bein’ all kickass to your boss just now was really hot.”
I sagged, burying my face in my hands. “I’m so fired.”
Just then, the radar began to beep again. With a heavy sigh, I began to look at the instruments, the equipment. “I feel like I’m in a movie, you know when a modern-day pilot has to fly a plane from the 1940s or something and the whole dash is full of buttons that don’t make sense.” I shook my head, starting to think a little clearer. “That’s an early Doppler and this is a RAPIC, I think. I’ve seen them in pictures.”
Tully squeezed my shoulder. “See? You’re getting it already.”
I flipped the switches back on that he’d shut off earlier. I wheeled my chair over to the right. “And this is one of the first time-lapse sequencers. My god, did wegoback in time?”
“Kinda feels like it.”
“Can you please do me a favour and see if there’s a manual or instruction booklet on the shelves or in a cupboard, or—” I looked around. “—something, somewhere. A filing cabinet, maybe. Google won’t help me here.”
Tully went straight to the shelves and started lifting things and rummaging through boxes. I turned back once to see that he’d found a helmet with a torchlight strapped to it. It was now on his head. By the time I’d read the old printed labels underneath some metal flip switches and correlated it to its function on the dash, Tully let out a loud, “Ta-da!” while wielding a book over his helmet.
“Printed in 1992,” he said, handing it over.
It was, indeed, a manual to the instrument dash. From 1992.
“Oh god,” I said, taking the book. I dusted it off and skimmed through the first pages. The radar beeped again, and at least I knew which switch to flip. The storm was still moving in, and I could only guess by the gauges on the radar that it was a few hours away. “Who the hell am I supposed to notify about the warning?”
Tully grimaced and shrugged in an ‘I have no clue’ kind of way, just as my phone rang. I saw it was my boss and answered halfway through the first ring.
