*** 

Rose was slumped down in a chair with her head in her hands when Pam entered the conference room, carrying a large round tray. She sat down across from Rose and wordlessly begun to unload its contents: a teal teapot, two mugs, and a packet of peanut butter crackers from the vending machine.

Rose peeked out at Pam from between her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I promise I’m not a nutter, just a bit tired.”

Pam simply nodded and began to pour out two cups of tea. “It’s English Breakfast,” she offered. “Two sugars and a little milk. Sorry, I probably should have asked first but that’s how I drink it.”

Rose took the tea gratefully, cupping the mug with both hands and sniffing at the swirling steam. Pam ripped open the packet of crackers and placed them in the center of the table, stealing one for herself then sliding another across the table towards Rose. Rose picked up the cracker and absentmindedly dipped it into her tea, looking up just in time to see Pam staring at her in horror.

Rose let out a small laugh. “Ah, try it! It’s delicious. Mind you, these aren’t proper biscuits, but it still works.”

Pam watched skeptically as Rose nibbled on the soggy cracker, before reaching out to steal another from its cellophane wrapper. Pam slowly dipped one end into the tea with a look of complete concentration. She ate half the cracker in one bite and then looked up at Rose with a scrunched up face. Rose burst out laughing, and Pam shook her head with a swallow.

“I’d this friend once, yeah?” Rose started, “And he had this huge thing about mushy food. He’d prepare his cereal for a snack, and then let it sit there for a clear half hour! Until it was just this indistinguishable goo, like a mushy cereal spread.” She smiled. “We used to go through a whole box of biscuits for one cup of tea, until the bottom of the mug became too full of crumblies.”

Pam smiled back at her and the room again fell into silence, both girls sipping their tea and munching away. Pam was waiting, and Rose could feel it.

“I’m not from here.” Rose said suddenly, after the last cracker had been devoured and she was left wrapping the cellophane wrapper around her finger. Pam nodded encouragingly. “I’m not from anywhere anymore, and I’m trying to get home.”

“Dunder Mifflin’s parking lot is on the way?” Pam said with a small smile.

“See, that’s what I can’t figure out! Every time I’ve been sent somewhere before, it has been somewhere that needed me, or rather needed him and had to make do with me.”

Rose reached into her jacket pocket and removed the jumper device and her mobile. With a deep breath, she placed both on the table side by side. “‘Cause I mean, I’m really not from here.”

Pam reached out to touch the jumper, looking for Rose’s approval before picking it up. Rose nodded and Pam brought it close to her face, slowly rotated it around to get a thorough look at all angles. “You aren’t from here.” Pam repeated back slowly.

Rose smiled. “Did you ever believe there are things out there, things greater than you’ll ever know? Things, beyond this world that you don’t understand, maybe that you never will?”

Pam shrugged. “I didn’t use to. Well, I mean I didn’t really think about it before last spring. But, my family, we’re all British too, you know. I mean, I’m not, I’ve always lived here in Scranton. But my relatives are mostly still there, near Dulwich?”

Rose nodded in acknowledgment.

“So when all of those weird things started happening, it seemed somehow realer to me I guess, than to them.” Pam gestured back towards the still mostly empty office. “I’ve spent almost five years working as a receptionist in a paper supply less than two miles from where I grew up. We all come in every day, and everyone hates it and no one really sees each other anymore.”

“Yeah, I know.” Rose murmured.

“So one of my cousins was killed last spring, by some kind of, well… giant metal robot? No one seems to know any details, just that he was doing classified work for the British government. And I got completely obsessed afterwards, pulling articles, searching for blogs about it. Things were changing here and my life didn’t fit anymore, if that makes sense. Like, it all seemed so crazy that something like that could happen while I was here, photocopying and faxing, watching it all tick away.” Rose noticed Pam absentmindedly twisting away at her bare left ring finger, eyes a little unfocused.

“I'm so sorry Pam. It was at Canary Wharf?” asked Rose gently. “Was it the Cybermen or the Daleks?”

Pam shrugged. “I don’t know. All the reports I could find were vague. It felt like even the reporters and eyewitnesses couldn’t reconcile what they had seen with what life is supposed to be.”

“I was there.” Rose said quietly, after a long pause. “That’s where I was lost.”

Pam looked up questioningly.

“For the first 19 years of my life, I lived with my mum in a London council estate, and nothing happened. Nothing at all, and then one day I met this man called 'The Doctor', and he had this beautiful traveling machine. He took me all over and he showed me all of these terrible, wonderful, astounding things. Things I never would have imagined, things I never would have thought to imagine.” Rose paused to catch her breath, getting more animated as she spoke. “But it’s more than that. He showed me a better way of living our lives. To never give up, to make a stand. To say no! And be heard!” Rose slammed her palm down on the table, and the mugs and teapot jumped a little in surprise.

She slumped back down in her chair and continued in a much smaller voice. “He showed me myself, through the whole of time and space, and I vowed to stay with him forever. But I fell. I slipped away, through a crack in reality. I fell and the walls closed Pam, the walls closed and I was lost; trapped in a parallel universe.”

When she looked up at Pam there were unmistakable traces of wetness on her cheeks, her smudgy black mascara framing the hint of tears still trapped inside her eyes. “He had to burn up a sun to tell me goodbye. Left me on a beach in bloody Norway.”

“I’m so sorry.” Pam whispered, reaching out to squeeze Rose’s hand. Instead her fingertips ended on the teapot, tracing along the smooth curve of the handle.

“Ah, it’s alright. At least he said it. Didn’t just leave me.” Rose said pointedly, wiping her face dry with her sleeve. Pam frowned. “Sorry. Sorry. I’ve been ruder lately. I didn’t mean it like, well anyway, that is the very sad story of how I ended up here. Looks like we are a bit linked, you and I.” Rose offered Pam an apologetic smile and Pam slowly smiled back.

“At work we created this device, this machine of sorts, call it the Dimension Cannon, ya? Well it basically shoots me through the fabric of reality and I land in a different universe each time. Mostly. I’ve been doing this, oh… about eight months. Though I suppose linear time doesn’t mean much to me anymore. I figure eventually I’ll land in the right one and get back to him. Only now the jumper won’t work and my mobile has gone dead. Don’t know where I am and I can’t get back in touch with base.”

“But he left you. Aren’t you angry at him?

Rose shook her head quickly, then shrugged and nodded. “Ya, maybe a bit. I know I was, once. But I know he didn’t want to leave me. He let me promise him forever. That’s something. And I love him.”

“What if he’s moved on?” Pam suggested, shifting in her seat uncomfortably. “Sorry, that was completely totally rude of me.”

Rose looked at Pam with a knowing smile. “Ah, we’re even then." She shrugged. "And well, then he best move right back, yeah?”

Pam laughed. “Sorry, I know it must be really terrible, not knowing where he is, or how he’s doing. Just missing him a lot I’m sure.”

“’S true, but at least it‘s not of our own making.” Rose said with a playful smirk.

Pam narrowed her eyes at Rose. “So… Dunder Mifflin PA?”

“But that’s it!” Rose suddenly bounded up and looked out the window. “That’s why this universe feels wrong, feels so different. Because it’s right! That’s got to be it. That’s why the jumper stopped working! Because it’s finally got me here!”

“But that’s great! So now what?”

Rose dejectedly sat back down with a woeful smile. “I have absolutely no idea. I’ve got no phone, no money, no way of contacting him. Just assumed he’d find me, I suppose.”

“What if we try to help him find you? Like um, send out some kind of signal? Like the bat signal? Something he might notice and want to investigate?”

Rose let out a giant whooping sound. “You are brilliant! Pam Beesly. I always told people I thought we would be friends. Is that odd to say aloud? But I did. Always wanted to do your hair and makeup too. You don’t give yourself enough credit you know. Or at least you didn’t back then. Which I guess is now, for you. Because Pam, you are absolutely brilliant. And more than that, you are good. You’re a good person. Do you have paper? I need to think.”

Thus began a heated half hour of brainstorming and sketching, until Pam looked at her watch with a small squeak. “We have to get you out of here now. You made it through Dwight but there is no way you can handle the whole office, especially the day of Bob Vance’s bachelor party.”

The two agreed that Pam would quickly drop Rose off at her apartment for the day. Rose would return tomorrow, posing as the new temp, and the two would raid the warehouse for necessary supplies.

“It will work. I can convince Michael that he forgot giving me the go ahead.” Pam said, and then added sheepishly, “And he can bully Toby into it. I just have to figure out Dwight.”

“Well, based on my brief encounter, he’s rather paranoid, right? Possibly susceptible to blackmail too? If you were to, I don’t know… casually suggest to him that he was in fact the one responsible for letting me into the office today, a violation of his position as, what was it? office security supervisor?…Although, would Michael even care?”

“Totally irregardless. He’s paranoid enough for that to work. We’ll do that. It’s perfect. Seriously, do they even have a Michael in your world’s version of all of us?”

Rose let out a snort of laughter and furrowed her brow, trying to work out the best way to respond to that dangerous line of questioning. A gentle knock saved her and they looked up to see Jim standing in the doorframe.

“Hey Pam, Michael just called, he’s running late. Some kind of emergency involving R-rated candy necklaces and I think he said jello shots? I told him you were in the supply room sorting thing out.”

“Oh gross, ok. Thanks Jim.”

Jim stood there awkwardly, looking back and forth from Pam to Rose.

“Uh, hi. I’m Jim.” He leaned forward to shake Rose’s hand.

“Sorry, right! This is…” Pam trailed off, realizing she still had no idea.

“I’m the new temp.” Rose jumped in with a smile.

“Oh.” said Jim with a puzzled face. “I didn’t realize we were getting a new temp.”

“She’s here on this new kind of temp exchange program.”

“Yes! Yes, I am. It is part of the, erm, Transatlantic Typographical Temping exchange.” Pam raised her eyebrows with a quirk of her lips. Rose went on, breaking out her haughtiest accent and trying her best to maintain eye contact with Jim. “It’s a collaborative exchange program, to better research and catalog regional cross referencing systems before the 2008 Expo.” Pam shook her head slightly and gave a slight tilt of her head to the right. “Sorry, 2007? Expo.” Pam nodded and the two girls grinned at each other.

Jim was leaning against the doorframe now with his arms crossed against his chest. “Well, that in no way sounds made up. Beesly is this your doing?”

“What?” Rose feigned outrage. “It took me three years to qualify for the opportunity. Had to, oh, get my typing skills up a bit. You need a minimum of 60, 70, sorry, 85 words per minute. And fluency in shorthand!”

Jim shook his head with a faint smile.

“Is there a problem?” Pam asked, smiling sweetly at him.

“No. It’s cool. It’s just that these kinds of things are supposed to go through me.” Jim said slowly, with a slightly pained expression.

Pam quickly broke his gaze and looked back at Rose, flatly responding, “Um, right. Sorry. Next time I will make sure to follow proper protocol.” Rose frowned at her.

At that, Jim stood up straight and stepped back, catching sight of the teal teapot on the table. He let his gaze linger on it before offering Rose an awkward smile and returning to his desk.

Rose leaned forward and gave Pam a sympathetic squeeze on the arm, letting the silence linger yet again.

Finally Rose spoke, looking up at the ceiling. “I really can’t tell you anything. Even though I want to, honestly I do, I wish I could. But I can’t.”

“Spoilers?” Pam asked.

Rose smiled back at her.

“With universe jumping, there is this constant risk of a, er… chronological refraction, ya? Um, it’s like, well, it’s a sorta hall of mirrors, it all looks the same as far back as you can see, but maybe one of the mirrors has a little dent, allowing for a tiny distortion. And all the mirrors beyond that reflect that distortion and so on. So, every time I change something that shouldn’t be changed, I become that, that dent and another universe spins off. So I try to keep still, so I don’t accidentally ripple one of the lines structuring the foundations of that universe. Got it?”

“Kind of.” Pam answered, though she was shaking her head in confusion.

Rose laughed. “Close enough. So Pete’s World, the parallel universe where I’ve been, it runs faster than this one. They are halfway through 2011 over there. Dunder Mifflin PA has been off the air for a few years by now, part of why I didn’t recognize you lot faster. But oh it was a great success. Very popular, one of my all time favorites. So I know how things end up there, but here and there aren’t necessarily the same, got it? Like over there they only had four Spice Girls. And no cucumbers. Eddie Izzard has his own line of shoe wear. So even if I know how things turn out over there, or how I think they should have turned out, I can’t tell you that, or I might just spin off a whole new universe. And that one could be better, but it could be worse, and it’s not my place. I don’t want that burden.”

Pam nodded and slowly started to stand back up, gathering papers and placing their used dishes back on the tray. “I guess that makes sense.” She stopped and looked at Rose, her next words coming out in a big rush. “I do want one though, a big romantic wedding. Someday.”

Rose looked her square in the eye. “Then you should make sure you get it.”