(Weak spoilers for Sapphire and Steel)

“The forces controlling each dimension” proved incapable of controlling their own internal politics, and basically went bang. The Elementals were early victims of their internecine wars: tricked by bogus mission calls that left them in temporal oubliettes or marooned in deep spacetime. They escaped and regrouped to find utter ruin: the cosmos’ shaky partial order gone to screaming chaos, time universally out of joint, monsters stalking all worlds’ nights and no house unhaunted. Their chains of command and supply gone, they faced the new normal with only their wits and what they could scavenge.

The thin silver lining was that they were freer than ever before. Their management gone with everything else, they had the chance to consider and rethink their mission. This they needed to do. Weakened as they were, they could no longer treat their charges as ignorant children to be guarded in sleep. The peoples of the universe must be told the truth of their situation, and empowered to defend themselves. The cosmic troubleshooters must retool themselves as teachers.

Of course, easier said than done. The Elementals are currently running pilot teaching projects on Earth-analog worlds in the simpler dimensions, reasoning that any mess-ups will be easier to handle there. Witness here Agent Steel coaching two proteges in the detection and resolution of spatiotemporal fabric anomalies (with the aid of simple tools even this world’s yokels should be able to replicate). It's going… well, it's not going. The proteges are eager… so very, very eager… but they're not getting certain principles such as

* Go slowly with that
* Don't touch the pretty sparks
* Quit making pew-pew noises
* Stop doing what you're doing right now before you…

That Pig guy is telling him for the fifty-third time he'd do better with the chickens or, heck, even that fox; but Steel these days has gotten a bloody-minded stubborn streak from frustration at the cosmic mess and misadventures arising therefrom. If he can teach these two then he'll have this “teaching” thing down. And he will teach them if it kills them, him and all bystanders. (Also, Steel doesn’t like manifesting as a cat. Never has, never will. Wasn’t his idea.)

In any case, Agent Sapphire is teaching the chickens. She finds them admirably determined and hardheaded, but somewhat overconfident and fixed in their thinking: their unofficial motto is “If it exists we can jump up and down on it”. ‘That Fox’ is sitting the kids and is very, very glad to be left out of it all: his life is freaky and complicated enough as is.

They also brought along Agent Neodymium, currently down in town looking for aluminum foil. They have just found a pair of “real cool shades” in a junk shop and think this is the best mission ever.

******

I watched The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales last week, and Sapphire and Steel back in the day. They have absolutely nothing in common, but that's not stopping me. Cringe Ho!

"Jupiter" by aeroman3 is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicd.....?ref=openverse.