"No, you idiot, not the girl - the screen!", Girard snapped into the mic, startling the agent holding the recorder-probe.

His team had jumped back, to this point in time, where it all began.

Every school-kid had seen it. Even Girard, advanced in years as he was, would never forget it. Beamed from an unknown source, the scan-line static of blue, then a tightening focus.

A woman stood in the window, draped with a long cloth. Behind her, a screen scintillated with blue pixels, right before the - what the experts called it - juxtaposition event.

"I think she's moving, should I refocus?", the field agent sounded nervous, and he should be. It wasn't every day you saw the portal to unknown horrors open before you.

"No, stay with the screen.", Girard's view bobbed to the screen past the woman's shoulder, enhancement picking out the rolling credits from an ancient media clip.

"Wait, one second... something is happening.", the camera view shook as the first bass notes of dimensional bending spread throughout the air, syrupy and slow, like tentacles questing for a grip on distant eardrums.

Girard leaned back, and rubbed his eyes.

Dark tendrils started flowing out from the screen, cascading to the floor behind her.

In his ears, the strangled gasp of the agent as one tendril pierced his chest, then another.

Girard hoped they would get what they needed this time, to save the world.