Epilogue...

London, England, January 1950

Within seconds the inky darkness disappears and the EIS team stare across the dinner table at each other. Nothing has changed. Mimi reaches out mentally to contact the duplicate Mimi and let her know that there has been a complication, but she can't make contact. Mimi looks around slightly dazed and confused but the rest of the team are already up and moving. Mimi follows them out of the dinning room into an impossibly dusty hallway. What was clean and well presented just thirty minutes beforehand when they entered the dinning room now looks like it has been uncleaned for years, with an undisturbed layer of dust covering everything.

Madeline reaches the front door of the property first and yanks it open. Everything looks subtly different. The cars look different. The buses look different. And the air is free of smog. Mimi starts to shake and steps back within the safety of the dusty hallway and she pushes out with her senses. Multiple points of enhanced activity come back to her, far more than she has ever experienced. As she informs the others of this a man in a business suit and carrying a briefcase flies overhead.

With a determined look on her face and her shoulders set square Madeline says:

Right! I'm heading for EIS HQ to find out what on earth is going on!

The others follow her, mostly in shock and unable to comprehend what has happened. As they pass what was once London Hospital the team stop dead in their tracks and just stare at the large sign on the front of the building.

Jackal Corps - Biomechanics for the future

Sven grabs a newspaper out of a rubbish bin close at hand and reads the date, January 24th 1985. 1985! Sven looks around at the rest of the team as the realization settles into each and every one of them. Mimi looks at Alfie and asks him if he has tried to contact Billy yet, the primary Baldrick shakes his head and then a look of concentration crosses his face and after a moment his eyes refocus and he looks up:

Billy is still alive and living in the little village of Castlethorpe near Hanslope Park.

While Alfie was contacting Billy, Mimi had also been concentrating. She had been pushing out with her senses and calculating how many enhanced there were in the area. She is shocked by her calculations when she estimates that at least ten percent of the people that she can see are returning as enhanced individuals. Once again it is Madeline who takes charge of the situation, she changes tack and decides that the team need to steal a car and head for Castlethorpe to catch up on what they have missed in the last thirty five years.

Two hours later and the team are sat around a kitchen table in a small cottage with a sixty one year old Billy. Billy's wife, still a little shocked at the sight of his much younger doppleganger, is busy providing ever flowing cups of tea and several rounds of sandwiches. Billy tells the team that he and the duplicate Mimi had rushed to Ravens Row but had found the building deserted, and when they had got to the dining room they had found that everything in it, including the furniture and carpets had disappeared. Assuming that Doctor Jackal had killed everyone Mimi had insisted that they run. She had contacted the Norwegian Embassy and secured passage to exile in Norway, but the day that they had arrived she had disappeared completely.

Billy goes on to say that he eventually returned back to England and the EIS and after a while even went back to work at Hanslope Park. He settled down with his wife and had two children and four grandchildren, and with a look of pride in his eyes he tells the team that some of them are enhanced. Billy lets them know that they are all currently considered PKIA, Presumed Killed in Action and that their files have been sealed. That decides it for most of the team, and they agree to slip from the pages of history and to disappear into the background.

Sven makes his way back to Norway where he presents himself to the authorities and is given a new identity. Madeline and Mimi forge themselves some new passports and head for America where they reunite with the Mescalero Apache, who know seem to have a very lucrative sideline in casinos. Madeline makes sure to stay in touch with Alfie and Sven, sending them a letter once a year and receiving similar in return, while Mimi adopts the pseudonym Michelle Wein and starts to write her Memories of a Mockingbird which would go on to be a New York Times best seller. And as for Alfie, well he settled down with his wife and family, Billy duplicated out all the other eight Baldricks and then Alfie reabsorb all of them. The net effect was that it made the single Baldrick a few years younger, something that his wife was very pleased with.

Towards the end of 1985 Madeline came across an obituary for Doctor Jackal, the man who changed the world. He had died peacefully in his sleep.

And that was the end of the EIS Team, or so they thought. Five years later Alfie Baldrick made contact with Madeline Forsyth, Mimi Dubois, and Sven Hyse:

I need your help! One of my grandchildren is in trouble. Come quick!