How I became an Inter-Galactic Temporal Master

How did it all begin, you ask? This is a common question in my temporal law class 101. I had been teaching ever since my husband died and I stopped participating in regular time travel. The students were always fascinated with my time travel experience. Since I was as old as Methuselah it is always assumed, accurately, that I have many stories to tell. Temporal agents are strongly encouraged to keep their personal lives linear, but that has never worked for me and my husband. Our lives have been taking place in multiple times. Sometimes we have been together while on different time of our lives. For example right now I am over five hundred years old and my husband has just died but a younger version of my husband has come from the past to take care of me. He and I were clearly destined to be non-linear. We never had a chance to be linear and we wouldn’t change a thing.

There are benefits of being a galactic temporal master. The first and most obvious is a ridiculously long life. The temporal computer has calculated my age at 550 earth years old, 776 when added in the time spent in stasis. This is the story of how I became a galactic temporal master.

My life began in an ordinary manner. I was born to normal parents in a country, planet, and era of time that seemed like it was going to be uneventful. There was no reason at my birth or indeed even in my childhood to assume time travel and space travel was even a possibility. Actually if you had told my parents or anyone who knew me when I was younger they would have been shocked at where I am now. My life as it is now would have been inconceivable to anyone when I was born.

I was born on a non space travelling planet called Earth. I was born one thousand nine hundred and eighty-one years after the birth and death of an influential prophet. My planet had only landed on our only moon less than twenty years before my birth. My parents were children as they watched that momentous occasion. The majority of the Earth’s population didn’t even believe that there was life outside of our planet. So the expectations at my birth were not what was to be.

So much changed from the time of my childhood into adulthood on my planet. We went from people being mocked for believing in other species to by my fortieth go around the single sun we had proof. A Cartaian generational ship had reached capacity and had to part with some souls. A country on the other side of the planet welcomed the Cartarians to live amongst them. To go from mocking someone for believing aliens exist one day to the next having them land and say they are going to stay was shocking.

There was so much chaos and change that within a few years our world had transformed. Not everyone was happy, but we were now space faring and could travel among the stars. It was a lesson on how great change disrupts. It was much like a remodel of one's living space. It took down walls and created dust and anger and stress, but the end result is a bright and shiny new living space that suits the occupant better than the old design.

The actual aliens interacted with very few inhabitants on my planet, especially where I was located. Regardless of how interested I was in them, and I assure you I was obsessed, it was unlikely that I would meet any of them, let alone gain access to space. My birth planet was still politically unstable and had over one hundred fifty nations-states. Many of these nations were fighting amongst themselves. My country was aligned with our neighboring country who had been in power for a century and was fighting the integration of the generational ships refugees. Another leading country had welcomed them. This caused a change in the balance of power and the new was winning. As I said earlier the country that welcomed them was on the other side of the planet, so for where I was the Cartarians weren’t at the grocery store or walking in the park or anything like that. I had resigned myself to looking from the recordings and just enjoying the show, from afar.

The generational ship was offering a chance to get on board. It was twenty thousand dollars. That was the cost of a brand new good quality vehicle, and I didn’t even have a bad vehicle so it was something that I didn’t think too much about my chances of going. It just wasn’t feasible. Then one day I was at my local shop buying some treats because some friends were coming over and an older man (who I later married) started to flirt with me in the lineup for the cashier. He caught me at the exit and gave me a scratch off lottery ticket. I wasn’t much of a gambler so I just laughed and thanked him. I didn’t get his name or anything. I just went home and set up for my friends that were coming over that night. I told the story that night and the three of us took turns scratching off the ticket. Imagine our surprise when the prize was twenty thousand dollars.

Everyone had an opinion of what I should do with that money. As I have said I could have bought a vehicle with that money, or put a down payment on a home. It was enough money to change my life or just give me a few good months partying with friends. To use that money for a trip to the generational ship was considered foolish to the extreme. I was halfway through my expected life cycle. I was without a husband, and was likely too old to bear a child, but that did not stop anyone from treating me like a child. I had never led a conventional life and I decided to follow my dreams and go and meet the Cartarians and get access to the generational ship.

I was reportedly promptly taken out of family members' wills because they were that upset with my “BAD MONEY CHOICES.” That is how mad my aunts, uncles, cousins, and especially my grandparents were. My mother was the only one who supported me, although she did say it was a bad decision, she just said I had the right to make them.

So I went to the generational ship. I got to go to space, something that I had believed to be impossible. Once on the ship, it was everything I had hoped it to be and more. I was so excited and happy, until I collapsed.

I was rushed to the medbay where the doctors told me I was dying. They said I was suffering a major heart attack and they asked permission for an “extreme action.” I didn’t ask what that would entail, I just said yes. They attached tubes to me and put me in a chamber. I woke up two days later over fifty percent lower in weight and completely healthy. My heart was now better than it had been my entire life and I was no longer obese. My mother had been brought up and was holding my hand.

Now instead of paying for this service I was paid for the fat that they had sucked out of me. The generational ships internal systems were powered by refuse and the pure fat in my system was extremely valuable to them so they gave me a bag of uncut diamonds as payment. Now we know that diamonds are extremely common in the universe so to the Cartarians it was nothing to them. My culture prized diamonds and gave them great worth. So when I got home I quickly sold them for two million dollars.

If twenty thousand had the potential to change my life, you can imagine what one hundred times did for me. I spent half on a house with three units. I lived in one and I rented one unit to my guide from the generational ship who would be working at the new embassy in my city. The last unit I rented to a man who resembled a younger version of the man who gave me the lotto ticket.

He was already a galactic temporal master. While the general population didn’t know anything about people from other planets or generational ships our governments and their spies did. My future husband had already married me in his past but my future so he brought me in to be tested as a temporal agent.

So I was tested as a temporal agent and everyone but me knew that this was just a formality and that I was already accepted. I was sent to sixty or so years before my birth to be trained by a man I had always been fascinated by, Ernest Hemmingway. There he gifted me one of his famous little black notebooks for me to record what I learned and off we went through time and space discovering the ins and outs of temporal theory and law. It was completely different than any other training that I had ever had.

Hemingway taught me how to blend in at any time or place. He taught me to quickly assess any location in time and space and make myself just part of the landscape. I learned the importance of not crossing your own timeline and how to avoid the most damage if you do manage to cross your timeline. We explored the Spanish countryside in from Roman times. We wandered the holy land with pilgrims and crusaders. Indiginous people before they were conquered. Everyday was something different and became increasingly difficult to blend in. My looks were an asset since I naturally blended in with most cultures but Hemingway was determined to make sure I could handle even alien species so we traveled extensively.

The beauty of time travel is that you can leave and be back in a few minutes. Regardless of how long you were in another time. You can spend days in another time and come back exactly where and when you left. No one even knows. Hemingway trained me to also remember what I was wearing, how my hair was arranged and what I was supposed to do that day.

So class, does anyone else have any questions on how I became a temporal agent?