Counterclockwise

The words that his supervisor will say ring in Simon's ears, seventy years before. How'd you like to meet your heroes?

"Honestly, you can drop your bag anywhere." Miss Mina waves her hand vaguely in the direction of an antique green couch- almost as antique now as it would be by the time Simon Kumar is born. Simon does as she says, still a little awestruck. Miss Mina either does not notice, or is polite enough to not really care. "Thank you so much again for your patience with the hiring process. A lot of wires got tangled there."

Simon swallows. He hopes they don't ever figure out just what wires got tangled- it's probably best that even he doesn't know how this job got fixed up for him from the future. He was told not to worry about the butterfly effect; at least, not on little things. Genie rules, the mysterious woman from the Firefly Institute had told him. Avoid changing who dies, avoid large amounts of money, and avoid falling in love. Avoid anything that would change someone's Wikipedia entry. Let's hope that's enough to prevent something worse than the apocalypse we've already got, eh?

"It's- it's fine, on my end." Simon's voice feels like it hardly works. Somehow, it never occurred to him that he'd tower over Miss Mina. Maybe it's because the actresses who played her in documentaries and dramas were usually taller, thinner, didn't have as kind of a face. Maybe it's because the history she left behind was so much larger than her little body. She looks up at him with a soft smile, waiting for him to finish the sentence, and Simon feels almost as sick as he did when he stepped into an empty building, looked for the Rift, and saw instead the London Eye. "I just- I'm sorry you had to worry about this, instead of the much more important things you've got to be doing."

Miss Mina shakes her head with a little laugh. "I mean, that's why you're here, right? Makes it a little bit easier for me. My staff are wonderful- they're doing all the good work we need- but of course I do want to be as involved as I can, you know?"

Simon knows. Oh, he knows; she will be his favourite subject in history class. She will always be talked about alongside her son with a large degree of unresolved tension. Fame and infamy, for completely separate reasons, side by side. Simon's father will blame Miss Mina for the Rift. That will be a rare opinion to hold, but not unheard of by any means.

"Of course," he says, just a split second after it would be natural. She's grabbing things strewn across the living room table, a thing ornate and old, a thing that reeks of a British aristocracy that Miss Mina does not hold within her at all. That's a little tidbit Simon recalls; she's controversial among the conservative and old, the rich who hold onto a sense of past Britishness, because she signifies everything that isn't them. It's a little bit of everything: she's not the first woman in office, nor the first person of colour, nor the first with a working class background, but being all of those things at once is a shock to the system. It's pretty far down the list of things she's famous for, though. Being the first named victim of the Rift is probably number one, alongside all the fixing she did to the country.

"So. I want to apologise in advance, because- I'm not an angry person, or anything, but if I have things on my mind I'm liable to just dump them on you without much warning or politeness. I just need to get the less important things out as soon as possible, you know?"

"That is what you're paying me for," Simon reminds her, as he comes over to help, with a little, "...do you mind if I...?"

She waves her hand to let him help grabbing the papers and sorting them. "Well, yes, but I'm essentially just saying that if I give you tasks like you're a shopping list or a robot, I'm sincerely not trying to be rude. I'll try not to be so dreadfully awful all the time."

"It's okay, ma'am, I swear, this is my job." He can't exactly tell her that anything's easier than MI5, even and especially the little errands he was always running before this sudden promotion.