The Very First Damned Thing

Cover of The Very First Damned Thing

## Blurb

*Ever wondered how it all began?*

*It’s two years since the final victory at the Battersea Barricades. The fighting might be finished, but for Dr Bairstow, just now setting up St Mary's, the struggle is only beginning.*

*How will he assemble his team? From where will his funding come? How can he overcome the massed ranks of the Society for the Protection of Historical Buildings?*

*How do stolen furniture, a practical demonstration at the Stirrup Charge at Waterloo, students’ alcohol-ridden urine, a widowed urban guerrilla, a young man wearing exciting knitwear, and four naked security guards all combine to become the St Mary’s of the future?*

## Plot

London, some time after the Battersea Barricades. A tall, smartly dressed man lands a pod in a mostly empty car park and exits, making his way over to a building close by. He is welcomed by Mr Strong and is shown to a meeting he had arranged at an earlier date, which he starts. He is Dr Edward Bairstow, and he has just 'invented' time travel.

The meeting party consists of Mr Black, Mr Brown, and Mrs Green. They discuss their apparent unwillingness to fund Dr Bairstow's research, which the latter had already foreseen. Dr Bairstow takes the whole party, including Major Ian Guthrie, their security guard, into his pod and travels back in time to the battle at Waterloo. The party is quickly invested in the happenings around the battlefield, making things considerably easier for Dr Bairstow.

After watching the battle commence for a while, three distinctly different figures request to be let into the pod. They are future St Mary's historians Dr Madeleine Maxwell and Dr Bashford, and security guard Mr Markham. The three give Dr Bairstow a mission report, subtly avoiding any information that might influence St Mary's future, and depart. Dr Bairstow's company is severely impressed, and they jump back to the London of their time.

Mrs Green stays to talk to Dr Bairstow for a bit while the others go back to their business. Dr Bairstow asks her where she would want to go with all of history at her fingertips, and she responds she'd like to go to a ball near Waterloo at the time of Napoleon's defeat. Dr Bairstow tells her she shall go to the ball before saying his goodbyes and departing.

Some time later, another meeting commences. The Colors have given the matter of a time travel research facility some thought and come up with three different places where Dr Bairstow could set it up: an abandoned castle somewhere in Scotland, St Mary's priory near Rushford, and modern warehouse at [PLACE]. Dr Bairstow picks St Mary's without hesitation, then proceeds to offer Mr Strong and Major Guthrie jobs at his newly formed St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, ticking off their two names from a scratchpad.

Dr Bairstow visits Mrs Theresa Mack, a ferocious ex-army general-turned-cook, Dr Helen Foster, a wonderful but also wonderfully blunt doctor, Professor Andrew Rapson and Dr Octavius Dowson, two wild academics at the University of Thirsk, and [NAME AND OCCUPATION]. He scratches off the remaining names from his scratchpad.

The conversion of St Mary's priory into St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, though thoroughly underway, scrapes slowly by. Dr Bairstow bribes the construction company to finish constructing Hawking Hangar within the week, then expresses his concerns about his position to Mrs Partridge. He eventually reunites with and welcomes Leon Farrell and his pod to St Mary's paint store, where he can quietly work to improve it, and the rest of the building.

Some years later, Dr Bairstow looks out of his window and sees a young woman exit a taxi cab and walk up the drive to the main building. He phones Chief Farrell and tells him Dr Maxwell has arrived.