Throwaway Sketch No. 1
- I love these all-in-one monitors; one little wireless patch and you've got it all: heart rate, blood-pressure, breathing rate, temperature. This is a perfect opportunity to illustrate what I've been talking to you about.
See them both down there in their rooms? What are their heart rates?
- Both at 50 a minute, sir.
- What if I told you that Jason's resting heart rate is 30 and Mark's is 40?
- You telling me?
- I am indeed. Keep watching Jason's heart rate -- notice how it's creeping up?
- Anticipation?
- Yup -- he's got a lot of trouble with that. Gotten better though -- used to be that he'd start to shake if you kept him waiting for more than a minute. We'll check back and see if he can get himself stabilised. See how Mark's doing?
- 45 per minute now.
- That's Mark for you: let's it come to him. Can't rattle him if you keep him standing around all day. Now watch the monitors closely -- I'm going to have the targets do a pass by so they know it's about to start.
- Interesting. The situation's flipped right round.
- Well-spotted. Now Jason knows it's starting, he's calming right down. Mark knows and he's getting excited. Let me put on a minute's delay.
- I see Mark's settling down now.
- Took him months of practice to get there. Watch this. It's a fairly standard course. The first shot will be a circle round and pause.
- Wow!
- What'd you see?
- For a moment there, I thought Jason wasn't paying attention, then he just whipped round and nailed the target.
- He was tracking it alright -- just listening to it move. Doesn't move more than he needs to.
- He's really calm now.
- You'll never see his heart rate rise higher than it absolutely needs to when he's working. Did you see what Mark did?
- Followed it round really nice and smooth.
- They both know exactly what's coming. Mark does really well with the set-pieces: never takes anything for granted, no matter how familiar it is. The job with him has been building him up to take lots of unexpected twists without getting rattled. Jason loves it when we mix it up -- the challenge is stopping him getting bored and taking short-cuts. I'll restart it and let them get on with their practice.
20 minutes later, inspecting the targets.
- What do you make of the shot grouping on this one?
- Pretty darn good. I'd be impressed if this were a still target and both target and shooter were moving.
- That's Mark's. Look at this one.
- Woah. You're having me on, aren't you? You just punched that 2 inch hole out in the middle, didn't you?
- Nope. That's what his being dead calm allows him to do. One of the things you're going to realise in this job is that there's no changing who they are. There's only bringing out what they've got. And there's so much to work with.
Anticipation by Dei
Story Notes:
I used to do these short 'throwaway' fics just to explore ideas that I didn't post widely. Most of them have long since disappeared into the electronic ether. Julieann found this one, for which I thank her.