People Out There Part Six

II. More People Out There
Part V

I.
Pauley Perrette and Mark Harmon had sat in Abby Sciuto's innermost sanctum for the last hour, eating Little Debbie Snack Cakes and discussing their situation.

"Well, Pauley," said Mark, "I'm feeling a lot better now. I was coming close to losing it this morning, I have to admit it. I thought I was going crazy."

"Not a problem, Gibbs," Pauley said with a grin. "I've got to call you Gibbs and you've got to call me Abby, remember."

"Yeah, yeah," Mark said with a grin of his own. "Abby. Now...I've got to go back up there and act like Gibbs."

"Yeah...it'll be the greatest acting performance of your career!"

"You think you're joking? But what about you?"

"Oh, I can bluff my way through, down here. I know how to use most of the equipment, and if something goes hinky I can always call McGee down to help me." Pauley paused for a second, thinking, then grinned. "In fact, it might be kind of fun to talk to McGee..."

"Hold on, there, girl. I mean Abby. Let's not go overboard here. Remember that anything you do here could come back to haunt the real Abby, always assuming you're right and we're going to get back to our right places after we do...whatever it is we're supposed to do."

Pauley grimaced, but nodded. "You're right, of course. Don't worry, Gibbs, I'll behave myself."

"Okay. Well...I guess I'd better go make my entrance."

II.
Mark grabbed a last Little Debbie and munched on it as he stepped into the elevator. The doors slid open on the main floor and he walked out and headed to his desk, in full Gibbs mode.

"What, Boss, no coffee?" said Tony DiNozzo.

"You have an obsession with my coffee, DiNozzo?" Mark demanded as he circled his desk and sat down.

"No, Boss," Tony said quickly.

"That's too bad. Because if you were, you could go out and get me one while I get caught up on my email."

"On it, Boss!" Tony said, jumping to his feet.

Ziva looked after his bustling form with a slight smile, then returned to the files of paper on her desk.

McGee got up from his desk, coughed, and said, "Boss...you told me to remind you..."

Gibbs recognized his cue. "Remind me of what, McGee?"

"That package...you got on Saturday..."

"Oh. Right." In truth, he had forgotten about it. He'd hoped...and expected...that he'd be back where he belonged by now.

Mark pulled the package out of the drawer and withdrew the scroll from it again. Looking at it now, when he was functioning on all cylinders, it still didn't mean anything to him. Why would someone send it to him..that is, Gibbs, and say it was urgent?

"Okay, McGee, make yourself useful," Mark said. "See if you can't track down what this scroll is supposed to be depicting, and then...take it down to Abby and have her analyze it." Take that, Pauley!

"Analyze it for what, Boss?"

"Well, to see how old it is, for a start, McGee." said Mark impatiently. "What it's made of, and if what it's made from will tell us where it came from. Stuff like that."

"Of course. Got it, Boss."

Mark then turned on his computer, and waited for it to boot up. Uh oh...he thought as he waited...there was that one episode, where Fornell had commented on him not having his machine password protected...if the real Gibbs had taken that to heart...

But not so, the screen and all its little doodads came up with no problem.

Mark tapped his fingers on the desk for a few seconds. What would happen, he wondered, if he pulled up the IMDb and looked up actor Mark Harmon. Would he exist here, in this world? Would Pam exist...?

He decided he didn't want to find out.

He pulled up his email, and saw with dismay that the inbox contained over 20 messages. He'd been joking with that bit about checking his email...but here it was...Well, he'd better read them...who knew when a sender of one of them might not come here personally to talk to him if he didn't receive a reply.

"Here's your coffee, Boss," he heard dimly, and he raised a hand in acknowledgment.

My god this is boring, Mark thought a couple of hours later. When he'd first started the day he'd hoped that no crimes would come up, now he found himself wishing that something would pop. People who watched the show always had the impression that murders were happening every day, and solved in 24 hours... He remembered a rather famous quote from Raymond Burr regarding Perry Mason...when asked why he'd never lost a case. "But madam, you only see the cases I try on Thursday nights."

Well, he found himself wishing it was Tuesday and something would happen...

Not a murder, he thought to himself. But something, where I can go and be nice to someone, so I can get the hell out of here.

II.

After Mark had left her sanctum, Pauley amused herself by walking around admiring all the equipment that was hers, all hers, and ensuring that she did indeed no how to operate them...or at least, how to turn them on.

But her mind was elsewhere. Someone...or something....had missed a great opportunity, she thought. She remembered a conversation she and McGee had been having...which episode had it been in...oh yeah, "Road Kill," when McGee had asked her who she thought could beat Gibbs in a fight, and he'd said Gibbs (because Gibbs had appeared behind her), and she'd gone off into a riff about whether it should be an 'evil twin' or a Gibbs clone...and wouldn't that have been so cool...if Mark had been brought in to meet the real Gibbs and they'd have had to fight...

Of course Mark was an actor who'd had a bit of martial arts training and Gibbs was a marine who knew how to snap someone's neck in any number of different ways...no, Mark vs Gibbs wasn't fair...but how about if they....whoever they were... could create an evil twin of Gibbs? Now that's a fight she'd pay to see...

III.

Tony DiNozzo was not a happy man. In his mind's eye, all he could see were images of Gibbs in a cell...or dead...while his impersonator sat so calmly at his desk slurping coffee.

Or was he just imagining things? Maybe that bump on the head Gibbs had had somewhere, that he wasn't talking about, had just scrambled his brains for a while. Scrambled brains...maybe it was Gibbs, but he'd been brainwashed? Like in The Manchurian Candidate? Not the newer one, with Denzel Washington that had sucked, but the great one with Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury?

Jesus. Tony buried his head in his hands. That type of stuff didn't happen to Gibbs!
But what if it had?

He watched as Gibbs got up from his desk, tossed his coffee cup into the garbage, and strode from the room. He looked around. McGee had left a few minutes ago to go down to Abby's lab, and Ziva had gone to lunch.

Tony darted out from behind his desk, around Gibbs', and plucked the coffee cup out of the trash with the tiniest of grips on its rim - just the way he'd delivered it in the first place.

It was possible to get fingerprints off styrofoam. Not a lot of people knew that.

Molybdenum disulphide suspension would do the trick, or mercury powder.

He'd go in to Abby's lab later on tonight, when she was safely gone, and bring up the prints. (He knew that if he asked her to pull up the prints herself, but then took them away rather than let her run them through the system, she'd bombard him with questions, which he didn't want to have to bother with.)

And once he got the prints, he'd run them through the department's database, and see if they matched Gibbs.

And if they didn't match...he and that little piece of ... would have a little talk.

Tony cracked his knuckles. Yeah. A little talk.