Ohh Goodie! Its finally here...

Sorry all if stream of conciounes commentary is passe... i just couldnt Passe it up.
<Play rimshot.mp3>

> Her white lab coat was smudged and stained, her clothes were rumpled,
> her hair wasn't much better off, and her eyes had that too-bright
> intensity that meant she'd been at whatever she was doing for longer
> than was strictly healthy.

In other words, typical UF-Sara...

> taking on an earnest look. "Listen, we need to get this place cleaned
> up some before Grissom shows up and - "
> " - starts finishing your sentences for you?" came the voice

Dvhil... Just how DOES Gil do that??? Ancient Salusian secret, I guess!

> "It could be worse," he pointed out helpfully. "You could
> still be in there... "
> Greg turned around, the look of mingled panic and fury on his
> face startling Nick into silence.
> "Sara -is- still in there!"

Poor Nick. He does seem to draw the short stick as far as having clue anvils dropped on him, doesnt he?

> Compton considered saying "no" just to see what would happen,
> decided against it.

Wise man... Especially since at the moment he doesnt know what Catherine and Brass know. Saying no would have just made things even harder on him.

> "Why do they always think playing dumb will help?" Catherine
> wondered rhetorically.

Mostly because they've all seen so many cop shows its ingrained into their heads... admit nothing until forced into it? Not that it actually applies this time around.

> "And what certification would you need to work on a son of a
> bitch?" Brass asked archly.

A good right hook if you ask me...

> "I don't appreciate having to get up in the middle of the
> night to clean up your messes, Gil," he said with cordial venom.

Or maybe we should go straight to a kick in the groin? Laughing boy doesnt know it, but there's a passage in a song about what he's doing here: "One foot in the hole, one foot digging deeper..."

> "Oh, -that-," he said. "That interlock was defective, Gil.
> It kept kicking the damn thing offline whenever the power level went
> above 100%, so every time I needed to check something at 105, I had to
> go into the damned equipment room and reset it three or four times.

In other words... IT WORKED EXACTLY LIKE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO. An just WHAT exactly is 'Gods gift to self importance' DOING with it? Its not like he's the hands on type. THats what he has people like Barry Allen for.

> "As near as we can calculate, Sara Sidle was standing three feet
> away from the unit when that happened," Grissom went on. Then his voice
> suddenly lost its conversational tone, becoming as cold and hard as his eyes

In other words, that same voice hundreds of perps have come to hate... that of Justice being pronounced as he reveals the key bit of fact that puts them away.

> Ecklie's frayed patience parted. "What are you getting so
> worked up about, Barry?" he snapped. "YOU weren't dumb enough to blow
> yourself up with it!"
> Allen stared at his former boss with a look of disbelief for a
> second -
> - and then socked him in the jaw, sending him clean over
> backward.

GO BARRY! Now wait a sec... Barry Allen. Barry Allen... I know I've heard that name somewhere before. And as much as Echly deserves getting punched, it seems like he's pushing buttons he doesnt know he's pushing as well?

> "Two, three months, that's all I need," Gryphon assured him.
> "I've already got a candidate in mind, I just have to figure out how
> to pry him out of the cushy job he already has."

Argh! More suspense... I suppose UF-G could mean Barry himself, but somehow I doubt it. And HE implies a male; probobly someone we already know. And while G could be talking about a certain Mythbuster who's done everything, he wouldnt really NEED to pry him out of MI-5, Jamies offered his services if needed.

> Before Dr. B.J. Hunnicut had finished speaking his name,
> Gryphon was on his feet, the movement so quick and fluid that the
> charge nurse, who had been convinced the man was in fact asleep,
> started slightly.

And that actually is one of the benifits of the sort of meditation G was doing. If neccecary, he could have been sleeping and still switched back into full awake that fast.

> Cameron smiled. "With no recommendation at all," she replied.
> "With luck, I was here before they realized I'd left."

Which, in its own way is actually a higher recommendation... that the EA wouldnt willingly let her go. It also says some bad things about the level of totalitarianism the EA has reached at this point, which is still prior to Infamy if I'm recalling dates correctly.

> "What do you, have her on a Miraculon drip?"
> Cameron shook her head. "We thought about it, but about 10
> percent of the Cheltari Salusian population has a severe allergy."

Now hooooold on a second... Thinking back to the opening scene, Miraculon is depressingly toxic in high dosages. about a one in three at 5 times the dosage of a trauma patch, they said. Seems to me like a drip like that would be contra indicated unless you've got something like Geoff's Daodan to use it to power some directed healing.

> "And of course every wacko in the city picks this week
> to get up to weird tricks."

Ah. The sort of cases that make interesting TV episodes, then.

> Skuld's grin widened. "I don't need it to identify you...
> exactly. But it needs to be fresh."

Ah yes. The one like from the teaser thats had us all up in speculation. It occurs to me that needing a fresh DNA sample wouldnt be needed to identify her AS someone, but rather to identify her TO someTHING... something biologically based, in fact. A possible clue to project Cardinal? And there is still no guarentee that whatever the payoff is on this will be revealed in part 2, either. There is also the chance that its only there to drive us nuts speculating, but that actualy kinda violates one of the key rules of writing... dont waste words that dont move the plot forward.

> "That's the $64,000 question," Cameron agreed. "The short
> answer is, we don't know." She gave a rueful grin and added, "The long
> answer is, we really don't know."

Heh... And I doubt that Cameron has a clue as to the origin of the Sixty Four thousand dollar question. The only thing I can think of here is that I personally would have said "The long answer is, We dont even have a CLUE!"

> He smiled. "I don't
> suppose you know anybody with specialized knowledge of accelerated
> humanoid metabolism."

Obviously, the Titans dont go to Boyce when they get banged up then... I dont recall, but this does seem to make it clear that there is proboboly a darn good medbay in the Tower though. And this brings up the question of if G knows the secret identities of the Titans. Personally, I'd guess that he doesnt, but its because he chooses not to know.

> "When you were selected for the Lens... was there a gene scan
> involved?"

You know, we've SEEN Skuld do the test of light more than once on screen folks. And, as Gil points out, if there is any gene scanning, its done mystically, rather than technologically during the forging of the lens. Then again, as a mystic construct its just as likely that the Lens reads a persons auric field to identify its owner as any sort of physical genetic check.

> She looked at her etherwatch, switched its
> mode, and got a fix on her coordinates from the pseudocontinent's
> positioning system. Then she pulled up the list of standard waypoints
> and looked for a suitably distant one.

Smart girl. Its not just a calibrated watch, its an I(PO)-Phone! but... does it play music?

> "... the Great Western Ocean. That's... that's -Perth- over
> there. I just crossed the pseudocontinent."

Well, as nice as it is to see that there is more than once city, Sara does engage in a bit of hyperbole here. IIRC, NA itself is just about in the center of the psudocontinent, not at the eastern edge; even if it was, technically she still wouldnt have crossed the entire psudocontinent until after she'd reached Perth, assuming that said city really was over near the actual western terminus of the 'planetary' zone.

> Two rows away, to her shock, someone else was doing the same
> thing - at the same speed.
> Barry Allen turned,

I KNEW THE BLOODY NAME SOUNDED FAMILIAR!!!!!!

> "Eerily similar in some respects," Allen said. "I was struck by
> the lightning -directly-, and my chemical bath came from a supply
> cabinet that was next to me at the time, but the general circumstances
> were very much the same."

Your a better man than I am Barry Allen. If it was me, there would have been contact between nads and hands... at super speeds, after having my buttons pushed like that!

> "Fate's given you a great gift, Sara. If you want, I can teach you how
> to use it... but what you do with it after that is up to you."

And that, folks, is the key difference between the Gryphons and the General Zods. One chooses to use his power to protect, the other to dominate.

> Sara wasn't usually
> the "can I talk to you a second" type, and when she was, the resulting
> discussion had a tendency to get -weird- by Grissom's standards.

Now, are we talking early almost socially inept Gil, or the later, more mature Gil? cause, if its the latter, the weirdness level he's been exposed to is exponentially higher after all...

> This platform represents one of the largest
> continuous flat surfaces ever created, a square, utterly featureless
> plain of metal encompassing fully 100 million square miles

again, a nitpick... to me it would make slightly more sense for it to be rectangular at about a 1:10 width/lenght setup. Other than that, sounds like one of the places Corwin goes when he needs to work the kinks out of Buckaroo's JetCar.

> "Uhh... before we do, what's with the Agatha Heterodyne
> goggles?" Greg wondered.
> With a slight smirk, Sara reached up, settled the goggles over
> her eyes, and regarded her Dantrovian colleague through their green-
> tinted lenses.
> "I'm doing Science, Greg," she replied as if the answer were
> self-evident. He could hear the capital letter. "It's required."

Such a great line... even those of us who arnt total Girl Genious geeks got it, even if we didnt completely 'get it'.

> Greg turned to Nick, slack-jawed, and managed to say, "... I
> guess she doesn't need a jet car."

Greg gets all the best lines, you know that???

> "Sort of makes you wonder if the rumors are true," Greg agreed.
> "Maybe the Chief really -can- see the future."

Nope... but he does have one heck of a writer in his courner. :P

> "Oh, come on, Dr. Cameron," said Nick with a grin. "Among
> witnesses trying to explain things to us criminalists, Done-Fell-Over
> Syndrome is the leading cause of unexplained deaths. You're in
> emergency medicine, surely you've heard of it."

Which, if you think about it, makes sense! to someone who didnt see whatever caused the person to loose conciousness or worse, all they know is the dude DFO'd!

> Cameron laughed. "Ah. No doubt this is a corollary to the
> Mysterious Dude Defense I've read so much about."

Only if your names are Benjamin Hutchins or Richard Kimbal...

> Sara watched him go, then turned to the others. "Well, that was
> abrupt."
> "Yeah, I wonder what he meant by 'this complicates things',"
> Nick mused.
> "Pay scale's probably different if you've got superpowers," said
> Warrick. "Not that you'll ever need to get paid again after the OT on
> that Zardon job."

I dunno about the pay scale, but it probobly does complicate Gil's life in and of... there isnt much reason she CANT date the Chief now, is Sara going to go the whole Costumed Crimefigher route? Maybe he's worried she'll get pulled from the lab and assigned to SA 7? Any or all of them would concern him, not just as Night shift supervisor, but I got the feeling from what Catherine said earlier talking to Echly's brother in law that Grissom is also head of the lab. Which makes sense, seeeing as how he's also a lensman. Not that you'd have to be a lensman to HAVE the job, but given a choice between someone who qualified for a Lens vs someone who didnt, I'd choose the Lensman.

> "We're on Tatooine, Mom," Lindsey explained patiently. "They
> don't have video phones way out here. Listen, are you still coming to
> the show on Meizuri next week?"

Hi Lindsey! Huh... what are you doing out on Tatooine? well, it IS summer break by the Date stamps, so its no like you're ditching school...

> "Listen to me, only child," Catherine said. "Older guys are
> nothin' but trouble."
> "Funny, Captain Tenjou told me the same thing once.

Especially when the older guy in question doesnt have the common sense to DIE when he's supposed to...

OH! I get it. Lindsey's riding along with the Valient's/AoN's Summer Tour.

> "Mmmm," Brass grunted. "Why do you guys never turn on the
> lights? I mean, I know having a flashlight fetish is a prerequisite for
> the job and all..."

I've always wondered that too Jim. TOo bad G isnt going to give us an answer, cause... its really not important to the story at hand you see.

> "Jeez." Gryphon put away his weapon. "Don't do that. I
> could've shot you."
> Sara gave that a moment's consideration, then said matter-of-
> factly, "Actually, I don't think you could."

A good point in two separate ways... UF-G, even after all thats happened to him has NEVER struck me as the type who would shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe during a combat sortee, back in the Golden Age, but not out of combat. And of course there's the whole Sara could dodge it now anyway thing. Or disarm him.

> At least I've got the vest...
> And then the gun spoke, not with the roar of exploding
> propellant but the throaty energy report of a blaster.

> "... shit."

Pretty much sums up my reactions too Nick. This too, however, begs a nitpick. Certainly Slugthrowers, as a completely mature tech, seem to be the weapon of choice for those on a budget. However, blaster type weapons should be common enough that any body armor issued to law enforcement really should incorporate some protection from them....