Giles
- You may wish to consult
Giles (disambiguation)
for other, similarly-named pages.
Giles was a technology expert at P.R.O.B.E., joining at some point before 2014. He was second-in-command of the organisation, being told that he would become the boss if anything happened to Liz Shaw. After Liz decided to retire to marry Patsy, (HOMEVID: When to Die [+]Loading...["When to Die (home video)"]) Giles took over as Director. (PROSE: A Worthy Successor [+]Loading...["A Worthy Successor (short story)"], WC: Shadows of Doubt [+]Loading...["Shadows of Doubt (webcast)"], HOMEVID: Goo! [+]Loading...["Goo! (home video)"], etc.)
Giles seemed to keep his full name a secret. He signed his name "Giles x" on P.R.O.B.E. documentation (HOMEVID: Goo! [+]Loading...["Goo! (home video)","Goo!"]) but introduced himself in his video diaries as "P.R.O.B.E. Director Giles" (WC: Doctor X [+]Loading...["Doctor X (webcast)"], etc.) He claimed that most details about him were protected by the Official Secrets Act. (AUDIO: Memories of Tomorrow [+]Loading...["Memories of Tomorrow (audio story)"])
Biography
Early life
H. P. Lovecraft believed that, like himself, Giles was a Guardian of the Gates, born with an instinctive duty to mediate between humanity and alien forces beyond its comprehension. In Lovecraft's case, he was also a partly-nonhuman hybrid, though it was unclear whether this was a characteristic common to all Guardians, and thus, assuming Lovecraft was right, whether this was also the case with Giles. (AUDIO: Guardian At The Gate [+]Loading...["Guardian At The Gate (audio story)"])
Giles had "good reason" not to want to discuss his family later in life. He mostly remembered the bad times, though there were some good memories as well. (AUDIO: Broken Bonds [+]Loading...["Broken Bonds (audio story)"])
Giles connected his deep-seated fear of the Shadow People, mysterious beings who often appeared around other supernatural phenomena to silently observe them, to a hazy childhood memory of a "haunting shadow" at the end of his bed when he was a boy. (WC: Shadow People [+]Loading...["Shadow People (webcast)"])
Giles grew up with a close bond to his sister Sandra. However, they fell out shortly after her marriage to Harry King in 1991, and all his attempts to reconcile with her were unsuccessful, with Sandra insisting that her brother was "mental". He was not aware of the birth of Sandra's daughter Harriet in 1998, only finding out by chance when Harriet was already a grown adult. (AUDIO: Broken Bonds [+]Loading...["Broken Bonds (audio story)"])
By 2019, Giles stated that he had never felt the need for romance in his life. (WC: Stacey Facade [+]Loading...["Stacey Facade (webcast)"])
As P.R.O.B.E. technician
At some point prior to 2009, (PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars [+]Loading...["Silver-Tongued Liars (short story)"]) P.R.O.B.E.'s director recruited Giles as the Bureau's technician. He had a friendly relationship with her (HOMEVID: When to Die [+]Loading...["When to Die (home video)"]) and her wife; he would later recall that "when he first joined the organisation, the Haggards had been like parents to him". (AUDIO: Broken Bonds [+]Loading...["Broken Bonds (audio story)"]) He got to attend a few of Liz's get-togethers with her old friend Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, who made a strong impression on the younger man. coming across as deeply kind and regaling his junior with tales of Robot Yetis and Dominators. (HOMEVID: Legend [+]Loading...["Legend (home video)"])
In 2009, Giles visited Brittany Mordley in Philadelphia with Patricia Haggard and her partner. They accompanied her to a Wawa, but Giles had left his wallet in the hotel so couldn't buy anything, so Brittany paid intead, with one of her remaining Cyberon powers. (PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars [+]Loading...["Silver-Tongued Liars (short story)"])
On his second year at P.R.O.B.E., Giles was joined on the team by Archie MacTavish. The two got along from their very first meeting, and worked well together, with Haggard referring to them as her "golden boys". (WC: Manchester [+]Loading...["Manchester (webcast)"]) In addition to field work, they were tasked with filing documents in the Archive, though they didn't take those duties very seriously, often stuffing them "anywhere, just to get it over with".
In 2010, Giles was tasked with travelling to the White House in the United States of America to assist the Jovian Diplomacy Service with disposing of an alien monitoring device which had been covertly placed somewhere in the building. In the course of this work, Giles met the President of the United States, then Felix Mather. Felix would subsequently be replaced by Barack Obama by Faction Paradox's interference, and Giles's memories changed accordingly. (HOMEVID: Ex-President [+]Loading...["Ex-President (home video)"])
In 2011, Giles and Archie were sent to the Vault by Patsy, to investigate a duo deaths. Meeting director Vanessa Hardcastle, she explained that the deaths were accidental. She brought them to head scientist Miles Werbiansky, who gaves Giles the inventory of the Vault, and upon seeing Cyberon, Vanessa and Miles took Giles and Archie to the low-risk storage, the area the Cyberon was kept, to find that a container had been damaged and Cyberon was loose. It inhabited the body of a young girl, Abigail, only to find that her being a werewolf caused mutations to the Cyberon. Giles managed to convince the Cyberon into shutting itself down, reasoning that it couldn't do what it was intended to do, and instead posed a risk to the survival of Cyberon. He later reported back to Patsy. (PROSE: A Worthy Successor [+]Loading...["A Worthy Successor (short story)"])
At some point, he and Archie fought Shed Scales, (PROSE: The Door We Forgot [+]Loading...["The Door We Forgot (short story)"]) banshees and Valsheeths. (WC: Manchester [+]Loading...["Manchester (webcast)"])
In 2014, Giles found Box in P.R.O.B.E.'s storage hold and managed to repair her. He disapproved of Liz when she took on the Paul Reynish job due to the substantial workload they already had. Although he wanted to go with her on her mission, Liz told him to stay to lead P.R.O.B.E. if she did not return. (HOMEVID: When to Die [+]Loading...["When to Die (home video)"])
The new Director
Giles was made director of P.R.O.B.E. by Haggard (WC: Shadows of Doubt [+]Loading...["Shadows of Doubt (webcast)"]) after she interviewed him in the P.R.O.B.E. Archive. During the interview, Giles recounted the tale of how he negotiated the withdrawal of the Cyberon in the Vault three years prior. (PROSE: A Worthy Successor [+]Loading...["A Worthy Successor (short story)"])
Four years prior (AUDIO: Broken Bonds [+]Loading...["Broken Bonds (audio story)"]) to the Stacey Facade affair, which occurred in 2019, (WC: Stacey Facade [+]Loading...["Stacey Facade (webcast)","Stacey Facade"]) Giles was on holiday when he was asked to investigate a spaceship crash nearby. Giles met Maxiassa, the pilot of the spaceship. An entity called Mar'tuth appeared and began to hunt Maxie. Giles and Maxiassa killed Mar'tuth by using mirrors to deflect its glitches back onto itself inside a branch of Homestyle. Two months later, with the help of Sir Andrew Williams, he found Maxiassa asylum on Earth, and gave her his old job as technician at P.R.O.B.E. (PROSE: She Came From Another World! [+]Loading...["She Came From Another World! (short story)"])
The day after this meeting, Giles had to interrupt the tour of P.R.O.B.E. HQ he was giving to the newly-hired Maxie to go bargain with some aliens who were holding the Secret Services hostage after installing malware in their systems. However, Maxie managed to resolve the situation without leaving HQ, hacking into the Servies' server herself and removing the alien malware as well as adding new protections. Contrite at Maxie having felt that he was treating her as a burden not worth asking for help, Giles then took Maxie to an expensive restaurant for an official meeting between coworkers, trying to make her feel more respected. (AUDIO: Maxie [+]Loading...["Maxie (audio story)"])
On 23 April 2018, P.R.O.B.E. was alerted to a Facebook group focusing on supernatural events around London which had captured footage of P.R.O.B.E. operative Tasha Williams performing an exorcism. While investigating, they also found a credible report of a poltergeist haunting in Peckham, and Giles and Archie ended up driving there to banish the entity back to the Dark Dimensions. After they returned, Giles had Maxie Masters delete the P.R.O.B.E. videos from the Facebook group, but decided to keep an eye on it in future as a way to learn of new supernatural events they should be dealing with. (WC: Peckham Poltergeist [+]Loading...["Peckham Poltergeist (webcast)"])
Losing Archie
On 31 October, Archie and Giles travelled to Manchester with the apparently-simple mission of stopping a group of occultists who had created a dimensional tear and were performing a ritual to summon a "dark entity" through it. (WC: Manchester [+]Loading...["Manchester (webcast)"]) The ritual got out of control with lethal consequences, (PROSE: The Door We Forgot [+]Loading...["The Door We Forgot (short story)"], WC: Manchester [+]Loading...["Manchester (webcast)"]) seemingly killing Archie, as well as the occultists. Giles blamed himself for not having realised what was happening in time. Before he returned from Manchester, he sought out "every medium and witch doctor in the city to bring him back" but they all refused to help him, telling him that Death did not bargain with lowly mortals. On 7 November 2018, back in London, he recorded a video diary to talk about Archie's death, in which he recounted how Tasha Williams, Maxie Masters and Agamya Akhtar were doing their best to cheer him up, but also how badly he still grieved his friend, bemoaning the lack of closure that a real funeral might have brought. Even though Sir Andrew had begun sniffing around for one, he vetoed any motion to hire a "replacement" for Archie. (WC: Manchester [+]Loading...["Manchester (webcast)"])
Year of Perihelion
Needs more information from the P.R.O.B.E. Case Files and Out of the Shadows.
On 5 February 2019, Giles, who had just banished a pack of Shed Scales into the Appletide Abyss, met Stacey Facade under the London Eye, and Giles fell deeply in love with Stacy. A week later, he recorded a video diary entry, where he spike about how he loved Stacy and how he suspected his team of being jealous. Later, he and Stacy ate dinner in the Royal Observatory.
A day later, he recorded another video diary where he handed in his notice, and planned to "start a new life" with Stacy somewhere remote like New Zealand. Soon, Giles recorded another entry, where he said about how Stacey had actually been a love wraith from the planet Succuba. Fortunately for him, Maxie made a "concoction" which counteracts Stacey's pheromones, the power that allowed her to alter Giles' perception. Giles spoke about how when he was at a debriefing with Sir Andrew, who was surprised at how naive Giles had been. (WC: Stacey Facade [+]Loading...["Stacey Facade (webcast)"])
A "few months" after the Stacey Facade affair, P.R.O.B.E. investigated the pagan terrorist organisation Beltane. While chasing a Beltane agent through Oxford Street, Giles ran by chance into his long-estranged sister Sandra, whom he had tried in vain to phone earlier in the day, wanting to rebuild their connection. Leaving the prisoner in the care of Tasha and Bedevere, Giles followed her and discovered that she had had a daughter, Harriet. Back at HQ, Giles had Maxie investigate Harriet out of personal curiosity, and discovered to his surprise that she had a connection to the Beltane case in the form of her boyfriend Jonathan who appeared, unbeknownst to Harriet, to be a member.
Giles arranged to meet Harriet, who was initially sceptical of her "mental uncle"'s claims, but changed her mind after Jonathan bolted at the very sight of Giles. Chasing him to Modernex Labs, where Harriet worked, Giles found himself in a shootout between himself, Tasha and Bedevere on one side, and four Beltane members including Jonathan on the other. Jonathan was the only Beltane survivor, and after calming down Harriet, who was in shock at the sight of the murderous silence, he chased him up to the roof with Harriet. They were able to talk Jonathan down from using the Ogden Farm sample to unleash the "sacred fire" on London and destroying the city. In recognition that he had come to his sense and did care about Harriet after all, Giles put in a good word with the authorities so that he would only serve a short sentence. Though this did not alter his relationship with Sandra, Giles was pleased to build a new family connection with his niece, and she agreed to meet him for coffee now and then, though she made it clear she had no wish to become involved with P.R.O.B.E.'s dangerous dealings. (AUDIO: Broken Bonds [+]Loading...["Broken Bonds (audio story)"])
In April 2019, the P.R.O.B.E. team, Maxie excepted, were lured to St Thomas's Chapel where they were faced with a huge, looming, but ultimately harmless crowd of Shadow People, eventually being forced to leave without answers or a solution after wasting time and energy chasing the insubstantial beings. On 9 May, the full team investigated reports of a ghost at the London Palladium, which turned out to have been temporal visions transmitted by an Artari Time Projector. However, the case saw several more sightings of the Shadow People.
Over the next few days, Giles became increasingly concerned about the Shadow People, which had dredged up an unpleasant childhood memory; he tried to contact other agencies for information, without much success, and had Agamya search the P.R.O.B.E. Archive for any records Liz might have left of the Shadow People, again to no avail. While Maxie believed them to be harmless observers from another dimension, Agamya ended up sharing her theory that the Shadow People were malevolent djinns, harbingers of disease and misfortune, which greatly disturbed Giles. Ultimately, however, he decided to try and come to terms with the ongoing mystery and stop sinking time and resources into researching the beings, as he believed his emotional reaction to the Shadow People shouldn't cause P.R.O.B.E. to redirect resources better spent on tangibly dangerous threats. (WC: Shadow People [+]Loading...["Shadow People (webcast)"])
In June 2019, after a routine weak of hoaxes and minor alien incursions, P.R.O.B.E. dealt with a more serious matter in the form of Michael, one of Giles's contacts at the Jovian Diplomacy Service, sending them a mysterious package for safekeeping. Tasha was dispatched to the airport to receive the parcel, and found that its contents had killed the plane's co-pilot, somehow drowning him from within. After they opened the parcel, the object within, which seemed to be made of water in its natural state, turned out to be capable of shapeshifting into a variety of weapons, including a dagger but also a diamond energy weapon which destroyed Giles's CD collection and parts of the ceiling. Looking through the old LONGBOW files, Giles was able to identify the artefact as the mythical, shapeshifting weapon Varunastra. Overhearing Giles telling Sir Bedevere that "the pen is mightier than the sword", Varunastra fortunately adopted the harmless appearance of a small ballpoint pen. This gave the P.R.O.B.E. team the opportunity to figure out what to do with it, with Maxie eventually building a containment device intended to stabilise its shapeshifting, which was then placed within the P.R.O.B.E. Archive. (WC: Varunastra [+]Loading...["Varunastra (webcast)"])
On 12 September 2019, Giles recorded a "video diary", wherein he spoke about the coming perihelion, a lead Tasha found about occultists at Hanson Solicitors, and the budget meeting later that day. Giles remained optimistic. (WC: Out of the Shadows [+]Loading...["Out of the Shadows (webcast)"]) Later in 2019, (PROSE: Preternatural Nights [+]Loading...["Preternatural Nights (short story)"]) Giles spoke about his worries in a recorded case file about the coming perihelion event was coming, during which a dimension of concentrated evil would again make contact with the universe. He hoped his team would be ready. (WC: Shadows of Doubt [+]Loading...["Shadows of Doubt (webcast)"]) By then, the team included Maxie Masters, Sir Andrew Williams's daughter Tasha Williams, Bangladeshi refugee Agamya Akhtar, and the ghostly Sir Bedevere of Camelot. (PROSE: The Door We Forgot [+]Loading...["The Door We Forgot (short story)","The Door We Forgot"], AUDIO: Broken Bonds [+]Loading...["Broken Bonds (audio story)"])
In November 2019, Maxie Masters spotted one of the items on the high-security "Dr Smith shelf" giving off a flash of green light. After she spoke about it with Giles, he explained that the device was in fact Box. He allowed her to take Box off the shelf and try to repair her. After she stayed up all night working on the matter, he brought her a cup of cocoa. After she spilled the cocoa on Box, reversing much of her progress, she accompanied Giles and the rest of the team on further adventures, including helping the Space Lords to recover some space barnacles which had fallen through a space-time rift and investigating an electromagnetic ghost.
Agamya Akhtar, with whom Maxie had been having trouble getting along, spoke to her and Giles about her fear that the Box A.I. was malevolent and should not be awakened; although she continued her work, Maxie was rattled by these concerns and ended up procrastinating, working slowly and avoiding any real breakthroughs to delay the possible catastrophe. Eventually, Giles forced her to come along on a mission to Bildbriain Dairies to get her out of H.Q. and help her clear her head. Giles was excited to go undercover, creating an elaborate backstory for his persona of "enigmatic business agent Gilbert Slige", although he did not get to showcase it, due to a combination of his poor acting skills and of the man they were trying to fool quickly turning out to be an alien lifeform known as the Greth, who was defeated by Box after Maxie and Agamya agreed to trust the alien computer enough to plug her into the internet. (PROSE: Out of the Box [+]Loading...["Out of the Box (short story)"])
After Perihelion
On 24 September 2020, after P.R.O.B.E.'s Operation World Salad detected its distress signal and its remains were indeed found at the coordinates from which the signal originated, Giles recorded a data log and debriefing about a Cyberon which had materialised with Derby and soon deactivated. (PROSE: The Blue Scream of Death [+]Loading...["The Blue Scream of Death (short story)"])
On 23 November 2020, Giles received a cursed DVD which he had bought on eBay under the misapprehension that it was a copy of the rare Doctor X episode Doctor X and the Caverns of Andostar. He used his work camera to begin filming an unboxing video for his YouTube channel, only for the DVD to fry all of P.R.O.B.E. HQ's electronics. It took Maxie two days to repair them completely. In the interim, working from an Internet café, Giles and the others believed they had traced the location of the DVD's seller, and travelled there while leaving Maxie to her work. In their absence, HQ was raided by the seller, who had deliberately sent the team on a wild goose chase; he locked Maxie in her own office and turned the place inside-out until he found his prize, a Nolvox control node. Maxie was released when the others returned from Bedfordshire on 25 November, but was unable to give them any details on her attacker. (WC: Doctor X [+]Loading...["Doctor X (webcast)"])
In late November 2020, P.R.O.B.E. received directions from the British government to investigate whether a sinister conspiracy was responsible for lockdowns. Though he found the government's suspicions to be laughable conspiracy theories, he did decide to investigate whether any supernatural forces were involved in the pandemic, and found that one of the Jovian Diplomacy Service's files on the pandemic was locked even to his high-level access code as P.R.O.B.E. director. He rang up one of his contacts at MI6, Jim, who claimed that he started being followed as a result of Giles's call.
On 7 December, Jim, who had stopped replying to Giles's calls, abruptly sent him a text message saying simply "Got the virus". Finding the message out-of-character, Giles decided to go to Jim's house on the off-chance and found that an alien smell like burning sugar was emanating from his front door, as well as an eerie pink glow. He discovered that Jim had been glued to a kitchen chair in his home by a mysterious pink slime which soon enmeshed him as well, causing him to lose consciousness. He was unexpectedly rescued by Liz Haggard, who had realised that the slime was part of, or under the control of, an alien entity from a parallel universe. The entity explained that the breaches between Ecto-Space and the Earth had been opened by the U.S. government and it was simply trying to repair the cracks using the slime, a kind of cosmic "sticking plaster".
With Control's men admitting their guilt in the matter and begging P.R.O.B.E.'s help to deal with the help they had caused, Liz and Giles were called to New York, where they met Control at his office. He showed them the alien device which they had found and misused, resulting in the cracks in reality. Left alone with the device, Giles received a call from Maxie claiming that the breaches in reality in the U.K. were getting worse than ever. Recognising the type of device from her experience with extraterrestrial technology, she talked Giles through the process of disarming it over the phone. They then returned to London, taking the device with them with Control's permission, and by the time of the New Year's celebrations (for which Liz stuck around) Maxie had figured out the object had drifted to their universe from Ecto-Space. (HOMEVID: Goo! [+]Loading...["Goo! (home video)"])
New friends and old foes
On 9 January 2021, Liz Haggard dropped in at P.R.O.B.E. HQ and asked for Giles's help in finding and saving her granddaughter Elizabeth Holub, who had been kidnapped in the night by unknown parties. Though miffed that this was the first he heard of this side of Liz's family (with Elizabeth being the daughter of Simon, Liz's son by another relationship before Patsy), Giles naturally agreed to lend her all possible succour. With a little assistance from Maxie Masters, they used P.R.O.B.E.'s backdoor access to the Ministry of Defence's surveillance systems to discover that Elizabeth had been taken to Nottingham via the M1.
As they tracked her down, Liz realised the culprit was an old foe of hers, the Sherwood Sorceress, and led Giles to the Sorceress's old lair, a stone circle within Sherwood Forest. There, they found that the Sorceress, headed by two mind-controlled goons, had indeed abducted Elizabeth, intending to drain the child's life force to restore her own youth. As soon as they were discovered, Giles made to free Elizabeth, managing to loosen her bonds somewhat before he was caught by the two goons, who began to beat him up. Untying herself completely, Elizabeth helped him distract them while Liz tackled the Sorceress, managing to wrestle from her the magical grimoire that was the source of her powers. With the Sorceress now powerless, they called the regular authorities to have her arrested, then drove Elizabeth back to her home in Cambridge. Giles left Liz there to catch up with her family, then drove back to London, where P.R.O.B.E. handled three other cases over the course of the day before he was finally free to relax, record a video diary on the Sorceress, then fix himself a cup of tea. (HOMEVID: Sherwood Sorceress [+]Loading...["Sherwood Sorceress (home video)"])
When she went back to Spain for a week at the end of January, Liz asked P.R.O.B.E. to watch over a young friend of a friend, Sally, who had had a strange experience with a young man called Ichor whom she'd met through a sanguinarian group, then woken up in a cemetery, later discovering that she was pregnant, but unable to get back in touch with the mysterious young man. Investigating, P.R.O.B.E. discovered that Ichor was dead, having hanged himself from a tree in that same cemetery shortly after sleeping with her. They spent a night at that cemetery, trying to discern if anything supernatural was in play; Azacca Dixon eventually picked up a relevant a thoughtwave, and the P.R.O.B.E. operatives realised that Ichor had been a minor god from Greek mythology, who had hanged himself to escape a deal with a malevolent ghost, but not before ensuring that his immortal bloodline would continue through his child with Sally. Affected by the tragedy which had befallen the two young people, Giles resolved to call his niece more often. (HOMEVID: Ichor [+]Loading...["Ichor (home video)"])
On a 3 March, P.R.O.B.E. were contacted by a fugitive claiming to have information about Lauren Anderson, a doctor who'd disappeared after allegedly going mad and murdering all her colleagues and patients. Their contact turned out to be Lauren herself, now gong by "Lor", who explained that she'd actually been framed by Torlakh and had become a shapeshifter herself. She believed she'd been living with "Michael", a fellow shapeshifter, but had noticed that as soon as she left his side, she felt less in love with him, and that his company seemed to be draining her energy. Giles helped her realise that the "Michael" she'd been living with was not her earlier partner but a different shapeshifter entirely — none other than Stacey Facade, who tracked Lor down just as she was meeting with Giles. Stacey angrily demanded to be given back Lor to feed on, and began to devolve into a ravenous beast from her hunger. Giles was forced to shoot Stacey, though P.R.O.B.E. were not sure that she was really dead, transporting her body to the Vault. Thereafter, Giles and Lor became fast friends. (HOMEVID: Lauren Anderson [+]Loading...["Lauren Anderson (home video)"])
On 10 March, Giles and the team foiled a "Living Fiction entity" which had entered the universe during the earlier "pink goo" incident and had taken the form of a movie vampire. The "haunted" film-reel out of which the Living Fiction entity would materialise was indestructible to most imaginable methods, but P.R.O.B.E. eventually hit upon the idea of exposing it to direct sunlight, a weakness both of old film reels and of vampires, which finally did the trick. (HOMEVID: Living Fiction [+]Loading...["Living Fiction (home video)"])
On 28 March, Giles attempted to record a video diary about the activities of Faction Paradox agents in London, which Maxie had uncovered using her time detector. However, the Faction repeatedly rewrote the events of the previous few days until P.R.O.B.E. were left wholly unaware of their presence in the city. (HOMEVID: Daylight Savings [+]Loading...["Daylight Savings (home video)"]) On 4 April, Maxie unexpectedly fell gravely ill. Increasingly panicked, and faced with the fact that no normal human medication was of use to a Gendar, Giles took the drastic step of injecting her with a small dose of the Cyberon drug, hoping it would be enough to heal her but not cyber-convert her. Although it did immediately cure her, Gendar biology also proved more susceptible to Cyberon influence than humans, with Maxie immediately being taken over by the Cyberon intelligence and slipping from P.R.O.B.E.'s grasp, stealing Giles's own car as she made her getaway.
Giles and the team managed to find her trail again, however, and chased her to a cavern below Clapham Junction, where they found a crashed Cyberon pod. After the Cyberon fluid transferred itself out of Maxie on its own accord to instead revive the ship's Cyberon pilot, Giles managed to trigger the self-destruct with the help of Maxie's advice, and the team made it safely back to HQ. Although everything had worked out alright, Lauren Anderson remained cross with the contrite Giles for his recklessness in using the Cyberon drug, and, after recording a video diary relating these events, Giles intended to immediately have a phone call with Lauren and work things out. (HOMEVID: The Only Cure [+]Loading...["The Only Cure (home video)"])
On 8 May, Agamya's discovery of an old document dating back to his 2010 White House mission confronted Giles with the discrepancy between his recollection of meeting Barack Obama and the signature of the President of the United States on the paper, Felix Mather. With Giles and Agamya remembering Obama while Tasha and Az remember Mather, the team investigated the mystery of the two overlapping Presidencies and eventually tracked down Mather's last known residence, where they found that Mather was still living as a reclusive. Az and Giles talked to him in turns, discovering that he had been displaced from his rightful spot in history by Faction Paradox in an effort to get back at one of their old enemies, with the side-effect of saddling the deposed Mathe with an aura of wrongness which had made him a social outcast. Although Maxie pledged to try and find a way to cure that condition, which Giles was sceptical of her achieving, P.R.O.B.E. had no choice but to close the case. (HOMEVID: Ex-President [+]Loading...["Ex-President (home video)"])
In the shadow of the Brigadier
Eventually, Giles and Agamya Akhtar launched into a full-on spring cleaning of the P.R.O.B.E. Archive. By one account, while moving some boxes, the two soon stumbled upon a "host" of personal diaries of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart's. Giles then decided to record them as part of his regular video diaries to share the Brigadier's legacy. (HOMEVID: Legend [+]Loading...["Legend (home video)"])
By a subtly-different account, after classified documents relating to the life of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart found their way to P.R.O.B.E.'s archives by mistake, Giles began to go through them. He was interested in the figure of Lethbridge-Stewart, particularly how he had managed to retire from a life of constant contact with the strange and extraterrestrial. (AUDIO: Memories of Tomorrow [+]Loading...["Memories of Tomorrow (audio story)"], New Pastures [+]Loading...["New Pastures (audio story)"]) Worrying that the documents would eventually be withdrawn from his perusal under the Official Secrets Act, he began to record himself reading the documents aloud, so that he would be able to truthfully answer that he had not photocopied any of the documents (which would have been illegal) if asked. (AUDIO: Memories of Tomorrow [+]Loading...["Memories of Tomorrow (audio story)"])
Further adventures
In 2023, on a Tuesday, Giles was called to Tower Bridge by the authorities to investigate a mysterious rift and a deadly orb of energy which had emerged from it. Making his way to the scene, he was briefed on the situation by Sergeant Syre, who explained that the research team sent by the first covert organisation to investigate had all gone mad. As Giles observed the orb, H. P. Lovecraft walked out of it and explained that he had been flung forwards in time without warning while he was working on a new manuscript in his study. He told Giles of his status as a "Guardian of the Gates" who had visions of genuine threats to humanity, and, recognising Giles as another, handed him the manuscript, which described a time-active, "eternal" race with designs on the Earth. He then begged Giles for help in returning to his own time. Giles was wary of sending him back through the rift unprotected, fearing what might happen to history if he was scattered through time instead of making it back safely. Instead, he asked Sir Simon for help, and Simon was able to call in a few favours to acquire a device that would ensure Lovecraft's safety as he went through the rift, which closed of its own accord once Lovecraft was done passing through it. Giles then returned to his office, where he began to read through the manuscript, being frightened by the description of the aliens. (AUDIO: Guardian At The Gate [+]Loading...["Guardian At The Gate (audio story)"])
At one point, Giles crossed a road while on a smart phone; upon reaching the other side, he noticed that Lucifer was recording a video about his search for Lilith, proceding to stare at him. Later, while editing his video, Lucifer noticed the man and made a small digression about him — somehow using a close-up shot of him — voicing his confusion and stating "what the heck". (WC: Mission: Find Lilith [+]Loading...["Mission: Find Lilith (webcast)"])
Legacy
In 2892, on the first day of the Cyberon War, Box urged Lauren Anderson to do her best to survive, "for me… for Giles… for everyone we lost". (COMIC: Before the Storm [+]Loading...["Before the Storm (comic story)"])
Physical appearance
Giles was a fair-skinned man with light brown hair (HOMEVID: When to Die [+]Loading...["When to Die (home video)"]) which he tied in a ponytail. (HOMEVID: When to Die [+]Loading...["When to Die (home video)","When to Die"], PROSE: Silver-Tongued Liars [+]Loading...["Silver-Tongued Liars (short story)"]) He had dark blue eyes and, during the Paul Reynish affair, sported a short beard. (HOMEVID: When to Die [+]Loading...["When to Die (home video)"]) He still had a beard by 2014, (PROSE: A Worthy Successor [+]Loading...["A Worthy Successor (short story)"]) but he later shaved it. (HOMEVID: Goo! [+]Loading...["Goo! (home video)"], et al.)
In mid-June 2014, he wore a polo shirt. (PROSE: A Worthy Successor [+]Loading...["A Worthy Successor (short story)"])
Once, Giles wore a green and grey sweatshirt, jeans, and a rucksack. (WC: Mission: Find Lilith [+]Loading...["Mission: Find Lilith (webcast)"])
Personality
Maxie described Giles as "bright" and "kind". (AUDIO: Maxie [+]Loading...["Maxie (audio story)"]) Giles himself once stated that investigation was his passion. Although he was lucid about the untrustworthiness of conspiracy theories, he could not stop himself from investigating them, on the off-chance that something true might be uncovered in the process. (HOMEVID: Goo! [+]Loading...["Goo! (home video)"]) Giles was drawn to the strange and the unknown, being delighted to meet an alien girl (PROSE: She Came From Another World! [+]Loading...["She Came From Another World! (short story)","She Came From Another World!"]) and quickly becoming friends with Lor Anderson, a psychiatrist who had spent ten years on the run as a human-shapeshifter hybrid. (HOMEVID: Lauren Anderson [+]Loading...["Lauren Anderson (home video)"]) His curiosity meant that he had little love for the Official Secrets Act and people who enforced it too strictly. (AUDIO: Memories of Tomorrow [+]Loading...["Memories of Tomorrow (audio story)"])
Giles liked flowers, chocolate, (WC: Stacey Facade [+]Loading...["Stacey Facade (webcast)"]) and coffee. (HOMEVID: Ichor [+]Loading...["Ichor (home video)"]) He had a CD collection, and was an enthusiast of physical media including anything from books to VHS cassette tapes, being somewhat mistrustful of the Internet. (WC: Varunastra [+]Loading...["Varunastra (webcast)"]) He did not drink alcohol, (HOMEVID: Goo! [+]Loading...["Goo! (home video)"]) and was prone to bad sleep and headaches around the time of daylight savings. (HOMEVID: Daylight Savings [+]Loading...["Daylight Savings (home video)"])
He had a deep, irrational fear of the Shadow People, which he connected to a hazy memory of one of them watching him in his bed when he was a child. (WC: Shadow People [+]Loading...["Shadow People (webcast)"])
Giles fell prey to insecurities and painful memories coming from the disagreements and feud that had torn apart his birth family, years before he joined P.R.O.B.E.. However, this had the side-effect that he viewed the P.R.O.B.E. team as a surrogate family, caring about them greatly; he thought of the Haggards as "surrogate parents" when he first joined, and of Archie MacTavish as a brother; later on, he adopted a fatherly role towards Maxie, Agamya and Tasha. (AUDIO: Broken Bonds [+]Loading...["Broken Bonds (audio story)"]) He was more generally insecure and socially awkward; to keep up the personal he felt he ought to have as P.R.O.B.E. Director, he did such things as practicing "roguish daredevil grins" in the mirror. (PROSE: Out of the Box [+]Loading...["Out of the Box (short story)"])
|