How To Get A Promotion In Time Travel

The bugger about Time Travel is always remembering what you did with your house keys. You can get by without a watch, wallet or phone, but when you’ve come back from 18th Century France, narrowly escaping a minor beheading, and really want a cup of Earl Grey, the last thing you want to do is to have to call the locksmith.

This is why I generally hate living in the 21st Century. In the Present, at least, there are bio scanners which preclude such absentmindedness. Then again, I’m not sure I’d really want to live in the Present. Most of the ex-pats I know who’ve been promoted to the echelons of a 26th century living are forever complaining about how much they miss microwave dinners and mobile phones. I suppose every era thinks of the past as more golden and hopes the future will be more halcyon still. Unless you’re George Orwell.

I met him once: it was one of my first field assignments. Well, when I say I ‘met’ him, it was more like I nearly bumped into him as I chronosphemed (materialised) in London, 1927, on some shabby backstreet. I suppose he might have been a random vagrant come to think of it.

Apart from that, I’ve been very careful to do my job as a Risk Assessor and nothing more. The surest way to preclude the possibility of promotion and secure a permanent retirement in pre-historic Panama (or, worse, Auschwitz) is to take it upon oneself to meddle with the timeline. I would say, "just ask Henry Cossick" but he's probably a fossil by now.

This is something they don't tell you straight away when they recruit – in fact it's a particularly tiny paragraph in subsection NN of the Contract:

Any agent found to be in breach of the Contract may, at any time, be subject to summary Displacement in a time zone appropriate to the Misdemeanour. Duration of the Displacement may be temporary or permanent and its duration is at the sole discretion of the [Assistant] Director. Whilst it is not the policy of the Historical Improvement Society to sentence any person to death, all persons under Contract should be aware that Displacement might result in loss of life. In such an eventuality, Protocol ZED shall be in effect.

Whether or not Henry had read this, I do not know – all I do know, is that, one day he was sitting at the desk diagonally opposite mine, filing a report, and the next, we were informed he had been Displaced for breach of Contract and we were told not expect to see him again.

I'm probably making the Historical Improvement Society sound like a Totalitarian regime. It's not, as I'm sure you'll agree once you've heard my story.

Of course, beginnings are as elusive as endings in time travel, but I shall do my best to give you a linear narrative:

I was recruited by the HIS on my 30th birthday in June 2013. Hitherto, I had been slogging away as a Junior Assistant in a London Insurance Firm, assessing clients for potential policies and reporting back any proclivities towards the extremely dangerous that might lose the Company a lot of money. My career was neither brilliant nor in danger. I simply did my job to the best of my ability and, on occasion, was able to spot a secret paragliding millionaire through the veneer of his Versace.

For some reason or other, the early 21st century had become a point of particular interest to the Historical Improvement Society and they decided to recruit agents indigenous to the timeline.

My job was basically the same as it had been in Insurance – for the first year I learned to scout for potential anachronisms in 2014. Giveaways such as the idiot who wore anti-grav trainers and thought it would be fun to glide around London were easy to spot; the Mancunian making slightly too much on the races was more difficult.

This was really to warm me up to the next few years which consisted mostly of sitting behind a desk, analysing data sent in from other agents and calculating the potential risks to the timeline of any interactions. I was also given a rigorous induction in temporal mechanics and world history. This sounds glamorous but, even when I was stationed in the Present, the work consisted largely of staring at computer screens (or, rather, sheets of bionic glass – which amounted to the same thing – ) and waiting for a lunch break.

Apart from food, the single greatest advantage of working in the Present was 26th Century medicine:

I got my hand stuck in the lift on my first day working in the HIS headquarters and shattered several bones. Within minutes of my reporting to medical, the bones were miraculously reset, my skin regenerated and the pain, vanished. Apparently, even the healthcare service gets it right more often than not in 2517.

After some five years of training and probation, I was deemed ready to work in the field. What I wasn't told was that this was one of the most dangerous jobs in Time Travel: Risk Assessors such as myself are sent back to ascertain whether it is safe enough for the 'real' agents to chronospheme into.

The problem with all traditional historical research is that it is based upon sources and assumptions. Of course we have a greater understanding of the Past than we ever did, but there are still things that get left out of the 'history books' - or are dated erroneously. For example, the tsunami of 1326 came as a complete surprise to my poor colleague Gerald Hutchinson.

Then there was Angela, who was burned as a witch in 1647 because she happened to mention something vaguely scientific to the wrong sort of Puritan. Plague records can be wildly inaccurate, and there are some diseases and bacteria which – due to their eradication in the Present – are deadly to time travellers but seem to co-exist peacefully with the native populous.

What makes these little field assignments even more dangerous is that the HIS does not trust us to have our own Chronosphere to time travel with – instead, they send us back with a specially programmed 'Sphere that will automatically return after a given time. The Chronosphere can withstand practically anything, so if you're caught in the path of an erupting volcano, the only clue as to your demise will be when the Chronosphere re-materialises in the Present without you. Your pension will be paid to your next of kin and the HIS will mark that timezone with a proverbial red flag.

In short, separation from your Chronosphere means death or permeant relocation in some (usually) God-forsaken (or overly pious) time. Hence the minor beheading. Louis XVI rather liked the look of my Chronosphere for his private collection. I tried to convince him it was not a precursor of a Faberge Egg but found myself running for my life instead.

I seem to spend rather a lot of time running away. After all, any fool can fight or die for his country; it takes a really brave man to know the limits of his courage and flee. At least, that's what I tell myself.

Unfortunately, this love of my own head seemed to have reached the ears of Hendry – one of the more eccentric members of the Board – who fancied a holiday in Sherwood Forest and volunteered my services to Risk Assess. Having managed to avoid being pillaged by outlaws (or arrested by the Sheriff of Nottingham for looking like one), I gave the timezone the appropriate risk rating and Hendry went off on his holiday.

Unfortunately, he never returned, but his Chronosphere did. Covered in Hendry’s blood.

Needless to say, I was instantly demoted and sent back to 2014 to continue spotting anachronisms.

The next couple of years passed without particular incident. I rumbled a bank robber with invisibility technology, and shopped a 23rd century tennis fan with bionic arms from entering Wimbledon.

Then, I met Christopher Jones and Araminta Stirling and everything changed:

I’d like to take the credit for spotting a pair of time travelling teenagers, but it was they who identified me. It was April, and I was just walking through the park, admiring the daffodils when a girl with red hair shouted my name and waved at me.

I waved back, out of habit, and she sprinted towards me, accompanied by a taller boy of about fifteen.

“Mr Rains, it is you!” said the girl.

“Well, yes, my name is Rains,” I said, “but I haven’t the faintest idea who you are?”

For a moment, the girl seemed confused and then said, as if testing me,

“I thought you worked in the Present, though. Not 2016.”

At length, she related to me their adventures (which are probably far more interesting than mine. But I’m not telling you their story so you’ll have to forgive the edited highlights), and how I had taken her on a tour of the Historical Improvement Society headquarters. This, I had no memory of, and I was beginning to think her mad, until she mentioned Hendry.

“Hold it.” I said. “That can’t be right. Hendry’s dead. Or lost in time. That’s why I’m here - demoted to the 21st century.”

“That can’t be!” said Christopher and demanded I tell them the whole story. Which I did.

The pair of them withdrew to discuss something and then Araminta announced:

“Mr Rains - today is your lucky day. You’re going to have a second chance.”

“A second – ?”

“Yes.” she said and explained it all:

Evidently they were in possession of a Chronosphere (I promised not to ask). They were to use it to time travel back to the last day of my training in this century and give me a letter I must promise not to open until I was in the Present. It was to warn me to rule Sherwood Forest unsafe for Hendry’s holiday. That way he wouldn’t die, and I wouldn’t be demoted.

“If all goes well, the next time you’ll see me, will be in 2517.” said Araminta, “Only I won’t know you, so you’ll have to pretend you don’t know me.”

“But then, that’s the beauty of it.” said Christopher. “We know it works, or Araminta wouldn’t have remembered you.”

“Isn’t this all cheating?” I asked.

“It sounds like you’ve been working in Risk Assessment too long, Mr Rains.” said Araminta, as she set the Chronosphere for their departure. “I say it’s time you got a promotion.”

Of course, I don’t actually remember this conversation because, not being shielded by my own Chronosphere, the changes Araminta and Christopher made instantaneously transformed my timeline, so that one moment I was looking up cinema times in 2016 and the next moment, I was being asked a question by the head of 17th century Projects in a meeting in 2517. (I found out about the slight-of-hand promotion (or, rather, the reversal of my demotion) from Christopher years later but, as time travel messes with chronology, I thought I’d take a little poetic licence).

From my perspective, then, I was simply being debriefed by Kris on my latest research trip:

“Thing is, Rains,” he said, sternly, curling the right side of his upper lip (which I think he does to show off. I’ve tried to copy it but can’t seem to find the right muscle). “Thing is that you seem to find it impossible to stick to the background on these little trips of yours, don’t you? I mean it’s not the first – or even second time – we’ve had this type of conversation, is it?”

“Look, you sent me to Louis’s court to assess risk for a mission. It was obviously a little too risky. And, frankly, if you ever did any field work you’d know how nigh on impossible it is to walk about in the past without getting noticed.”

“Well, as it happens, I did do some field work some years ago.”

“Oh?”

“I lost the taste for it. But, perhaps, you’re right. I…I may have been overhasty with you.”

I knew better than to rush Kris. He loved nothing more than an overly dramatic pause. I watched the clock on the opposite wall tick for a full forty seconds.

“How would you like a temporary promotion?”

“Very much. Unless it’s only temporary because you expect me to be killed, or something,” I said, trying to crack a joke. Kris doesn’t really have a sense of humour.

“Well, as a matter of fact, it’s more the other way around.”

“What?”

“I’ll let Priya explain. It’s her project. Needs Board approval of course but I’ll put in a recommendation for you to be on the team – if you’ve the stomach for it.”

It was difficult to know if I did without any particulars, so I just smiled and nodded.

“You’d better hang around here for the foreseeable, then.”

***

“We’ve had to lower our expectations a little – after recent…well, you know,” said Priya, opening our pitch to the Board, a month later. The Assistant Director, chairing the meeting, cleared his throat. It had been his pet project. That it had resulted in the post-apocalyptic Alternative Future 416, was not something anyone working in the Historical Improvement Society would easily forget. Some of my friends thought it was only his role in rooting out the time terrorists who attacked us three weeks ago which that saved him from being permanently Displaced himself. But that sort of conjecture is rarely useful. Besides, there are those of us who suspect that Jeremy isn’t merely the Assistant Director, but running the show himself. In truth, it doesn’t really matter who’s in charge. Though Hendry’s death in the explosion did open up another spot on the Board, and I imagine Priya was angling for the seat. Hearing her say my name shook me from my reverie:

“Mr Rains will talk you through the Risk Assessment.”

“Yes? Yes. Thanks, Priya. So…” I looked around, nervously. Jeremy did that thing he does where he leans his mouth on his two forefingers, which he taps together.

“So, as Priya says, the target is a little narrower than…than…”

“Hitler – ” interjected Jeremy, coldly. I avoided his gaze. I needed to move swiftly on from all this.

“Yes. Yes. We need an easy win, I think. The early 20th century is so complicated, the domino effect couldn’t be calculated precisely. Hence, the 21st. Now, I know the scale of…murder...might not meet our threshold for a kill order but we think it will make a tremendous impact and…well, hang it all, isn’t genocide, genocide?”

“I commend your ethics, Mr Rains, but I think what we’re all waiting for is a thorough explanation and an overview of your RA. Perhaps you would kindly get to the point?”

“Yes. Of course. Sorry. Right. So, our target is the perpetrator of the Y2K attack on the eve of the Millennium, which wiped out the Ute people of Utah. Around 8000 lives and, of course, an entire culture.”

“Terrible. Terrible,” muttered voices around the table.

“It was the first genetic weapon of its kind and, although, as you know, the international community responded pretty quickly in tracking down the researchers, and in outlawing anything of the kind – it’s more luck than anything else which has prevented a similar atrocity.” I paused, here but, seeing I had the room, I continued:

“Now, I know the era well enough – I was born in 1983, as some of you know. And so, I don’t think it would be a great risk to take a small team to infiltrate the research facility before it’s too late.”

(I won’t bore you with the minutiae of the RA which I’d produced and took the Board through. It involved some complicated data sets and more complicated temporal mechanics which you wouldn’t understand).

At length, Jeremy asked Priya to sum up, in a single sentence, why the Board should approve the mission. She was, of course, expecting this. In my century it was called the “elevator pitch.” The trick (Priya told me) was to appeal to a little emotion, make it sound unrehearsed, and refer to the core principles of the Society. She gave a dramatic pause and, with just the right amount of feigned hesitation, said:

“If we are truly about improving history, what could be better than restoring a whole people to existence – even at the expense of one life?”

“‘‘Better that one man should die, than a nation, perish?’” said Jeremy. I don’t think Priya got the reference but she got her rubber stamp (or it’s 26th century equivalent).

***

“Well, Mr Rains, this is your big break. Your century, after all. I’d like you to be my second in the field.”

“You mean, you want me to be an agent?”

“I know you’ve been angling for a promotion and your RA was thorough. But I can’t pretend to understand all these 21st century terms. You know the most common reason missions fail is due to unforced errors on part of the agent – usually arising from their ignorance of the period and inability to think on one’s feet. Now, the only risk in taking you along as I see it would be contact with your past self but as we’ll be on another continent, I hardly think that likely, do you?”

“No. I was only 17 in 2000 so I was in school, or doing homework. In the Lake District. Nothing really happens there.”

“Good.”

“So, what’s your plan?”

“Well, unlike the men who head up half the departments here, I’m not one for going in full beam. The more people we take, the larger our footprint. So here’s what I’m thinking…”

Priya had broken down her plan into three distinct phases. The first was Research. Although she had been working with the historical documents for several months, we all knew that records could be redacted; news reports were unreliable, and video footage could be doctored – or simply missing a relevant angle. We needed to witness the event and, only when certain of the guilt of our target, move to Phase Two.

This involved kidnapping the culprit and interrogating him, in the attempt to find the moment which we called the Peripetia – a turning point, or point of no return, which set the culprit down the inevitable path towards becoming a mass murderer.

Phase Three was simply the execution. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle that part. So I put it out of my mind until it was absolutely necessary.

***

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Utah but I wouldn’t recommend it especially. I will, therefore, spare you the details of our stay in a motel, just off the proverbial beaten track some miles from the border of the larger of the two Ute reservations. But, maybe because of where I was born, I fell instantly in love with the Uintah river. We spent three days in the northern reservation before witnessing the great evil.

The disease spread quickly. By January 4th, it was a graveyard.

I can’t tell you how awful it was to standby and watch as little children succumbed to it. One girl – who must have been about four or five – I saw the first day. She was playing near the visitor centre – a simple game of imagination. She waved her muscovado arms about as if a bird in flight – darting in and out between the punters.

A bracelet of yellow beads on her left wrist.

Two days later, the wrist was swollen. Her lips, bloated; her dark eyes, empty of life.

“Bastards,” was all I could think of to say.

“It’s important not to get too emotional,” said Priya. “Of course, we need to be emotionally invested but if you let it get to you we’ll miss something.”

It proved easier than I had expected to capture the man behind it all – James Culver. At his original trial (which I just about remember hearing about, as a teenager), Culver was described as “collected.” He had expected to be caught. In fact, now that I’m writing about it, I remember that the thing which he had said which stuck in everyone’s heads (and made for a swift, unanimous verdict passing him a death sentence), was that, “The law can only avenge, not prevent. Not protect. But what is my life for all of theirs? I’m just the beginning.” The CCTV footage which showed him entering the reservation; his fingerprints and DNA on the remains of the smashed vials; coupled with his confession, made the case as open-and-shut as it could have been. He only pleaded “not guilty” because he refused to agree with the definition of “murder,” since it would have forced him to acknowledge the Ute people as human beings. A fact which he hotly denied and (according to some of the sources in our earlier researches) was going to be taken up by his defence council as evidence of his insanity.

I tell you this only because it might help explain why, ultimately, I felt no qualms about what we did next – which was to time travel back to the moment after he released his pathogen, and kidnap him. (You’ll have to take my word for it that this was a stroke of some tactical wizardry. People tend to notice humans disappearing into thin air. We had to time it precisely – touching him just as we chronosphemed together. Honestly, it was like something out of a sci-fi action film. But I digress. The important thing was that we got him, and took him back to one of the ICDCT cells in the deep past).

The Inter-Company Department of Temporal Crime likes to think of itself as the international policeforce of the timeline – although they are, of course, a mere faction. Nevertheless, very recently, it seems that the HIS has been working with them a little more closely. (In fact, ever since the recent terrorist attack on our headquarters. But I digress, again). They had given us spatio-temporal coordinates to one of their black sites (well, every ICDCT site is essentially a ‘black site’ in that they are off-book and impossible to locate in space and time; except that, being hidden in remote eras, they are naturally protected from changes to the timeline and do not, therefore, rely on ensurance technology (though, again, that’s a whole other set of tangents which I won’t bore you with)).

Suffice it to say that Culver found himself in a steel grey room, of about five square metres, handcuffed to a table, across which were sat a young, Bangladeshi woman in a grey suit, and a forty-year old man with a mop of unruly blond hair and a slight lisp (I blame the Cumbrian air).

“What is this? Where am I? How did you – ?” He started. I’ll spare you the boring stuff.

When he did, finally, start to spill the beans, they just kept coming – like when you hit the ice dispenser and you can’t stop cubes spitting out after you stop pressing down on the button.

“So, why the Ute people, Mr Culver?”

He was a little taller than me but slouched. He had dark hair which hung just over his right eye. (He was heterochromatic. His right eye was blue; the left, hazel). He was clean shaven and square jawed. Good looking. No visible tattoos. He looked toned but not hideously built. My impression of him was that of a man who cared about himself because he thought himself superior and didn’t want to give anyone the excuse of looking down on him. He had a habit of tapping his left index finger on the table in threes. I thought, at first, it was deliberate but, as the interview progressed, it seemed more of an unconscious reflex.

His accent was British – slightly West Country. Derbyshire if I had to guess. That was, possibly, the most surprising thing about him.

“Convenience, mostly. Small sample size. Mostly contained. I’ve nothing against them in particular. I’m a scientist, after all.”

“A scientist?”

“I’ve a triple first in Chemistry from Baliol, Oxford.” He tapped his finger and looked up at the far left corner. There were no cameras. At least, not the sort that he could see. 26th century technology was a little more subtle. He was coming across as bored.

“I would have assumed you’d have known a little about me if you tracked me that quickly.”

“You murdered thousands of people! And you’re telling us you’ve nothing against them? I find that hard to accept.”

“No, Miss – or is it Missus? Or Ms? – ” he said, leaning forward. Priya didn’t dignify him with a response. He slumped back in his chair.

“I don’t accept your definition.”

Priya and I exchanged a glance.

“Well, let’s set that aside. What were you trying to achieve?”

“You make it sound like I failed.”

“We caught your associates. The other reservation is safe. It won’t be a complete genocide,” said Priya. I bit the inside of my bottom lip in an attempt to mask my surprise. She was going off script. Perhaps she was trying to bate him. History never quite got to the bottom of how the disease was transmitted to the other reservations. Culver had never spilled those beans.

“See, now I know you’re lying,” he said, and leered at Priya, baring his bleached teeth. “I work alone.”

Priya didn’t even flinch. Instead, she leaned forward and, lowering her voice, said:

“No, Mr Culver, now we know you’re lying. No true scientist works alone.”

Culver stared at Priya for what might have been two minutes. Then he turned to me, and laughed:

“You’re right! You’re right. Of course. I have my lab partners. But they’re nothing. They never knew we were doing. They thought it was genomes and cures. The usual white hat stuff.”

Priya furrowed her forehead in confusion.

“Y’know, good guys. Cow boys. White hats! Ha! White coats you mean.” Here, he looked down at his top. He was wearing a black T-shirt, which he pulled on.

“Well, what d’ya know?”

“So you’re telling us that, without you, this would never have happened?”

“Well, when you put it like that, it makes me seem sort of important, now, doesn’t it?”

“And do you like that, Mr Culver?”

He stopped smiling.

“I didn’t do this for the fame. Don’t write that down, for God’s sake. They’ll chalk me up with the narcissists and the crazies.”

Hoping to expose a vulnerability I interrupted before Priya could ask a follow-up question.

“How would you like to be chalked up, Mr Culver?”

“I told you – I’m a scientist. A pioneer. Put me down with Einstein. Or, better, Oppenheimer.”

So, there we had it.

The rest came easily enough – times and dates. The point of no return. We soon had more than we needed for Phase Three.

“You’ve been very cooperative. Thank you.”

“It’s a pleasure. Always a pleasure to talk about my work. Especially before being cautioned. Off the record is so much better, don’t you think?” he said, leering his saccharine smile again. I could sense he was toying with us. Priya clearly felt the same. She gave a slight look to the hidden cameras and, before you could say “hidden camera”, the wall behind us rippled, and we stepped back, into a private room.

“Well he’s worse than I thought,” I said.

“Yes. But that makes it better than I thought.”

“So, what are you thinking?”

“We go back to ’91 and take him out. He practically signed his own death warrant for us.”

I nodded. The logic was sound but something didn’t feel right. We could see him, through the forcefield that doubled as a wall. He couldn’t, of course, see us. My leg shook involuntarily.

“Getting cold feet?”

“Yes. Aren’t you?”

Priya shook her head.

“Ever killed somone?”

She shook her head again.

“Me neither.”

“Think of that little girl today,” she said.

I was. It’s all I could think of.

“Look, Rains, we have the co-ordinates. Let’s get it over and done with and then… that girl can live. Besides, we’re executing a dead man.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s given the death penalty – don’t you remember?”

“Oh, that. Yes. Of course.”

“So it doesn’t matter if it’s us or the State of Utah pulling the trigger, does it? They will live.”

“I wish there were another way.”

“Well, there isn’t. He’s beyond redemption. Soon as he was born, I’d say – he was going to become this monster. So you can think of yourself more like a Greek god slaying a monster. If that helps. It’s just that no one will remember you being Heracles because no one will remember there ever was a monster.”

“What did you say?”

“I said…” but I didn’t hear what she said. My mind was racing. It was all starting to come together. Destined from birth. Ensurance. Alternative futures. Memories. That’s the real bugger about time travel – remembering what wouldn’t be remembered by others. Perhaps there was another way.

“Wait,” I said. “What if we simply prevent his being born?”

“And how are we supposed to do that?”

“We prevent his conception. All it takes is to alter the circumstances of his parents’ conjugation ever so slightly and the embryo that becomes Culver will never fertilise. We don’t have to take life. Not technically.”

“We need some more information,” said Priya.

“So – let’s get it,” I said.

She looked at me and inhaled, slowly.

“Y’know, Mr Rains, if this works, your name might very well go down in HIS history.”

“Yes, although I’ll have to rely on you writing a good report. Because if we succeed no one will have ever heard of Culver, will they?”

“No. You’re right there. But, perhaps, I’ll make it so they hear of you.”