Time Agency

by Aaron Frale

I woke up from the memory replay in the comfort of a hotel bed. It was pleasant and relaxing. For the first time in days, I felt comfortable and lulled into a false sense of complacency. I mulled the puzzle left by myself. The titles I noticed bounced through my mind. My earlier self gave me some time to study, so I was able to repeat them over and over in my head. It seemed I had a fairly good memory because I was able to recall most of them.

  Some of the titles didn’t make sense. For example, there was a title of a book called Yourself, but when I tried to pair it with books near it, nothing made sense. There was a book near it called Hidden Reality. But other than a tacky attempt at humor about hidden realities, there wasn’t much to go on. Using a pen and pad from the hotel, I wrote down the various titles and tried to reason out a solution.

  I put the puzzle aside when no immediate solution presented itself. I had to assume that I was still missing a key bit of information. I decided to turn on the television. My brain needed a rest. Unfortunately, I would get no rest. The TV displayed my face next to the well-dressed man’s. We were wanted on suspicion of the murder of the bookstore owner. They must have reviewed the security footage.

  Seconds later, there was a bang at the door and a muffled threat. “Police, you are wanted for questioning. You have one minute to open the door.”

  I gathered my things, which didn’t take that long. I tore off the pages where I worked on the title problem and shoved them in my pocket. The police of this time period probably would not be able to understand the puzzle, but I didn’t want to take any chances. My pursuers from the future could be working with the police.

  “You have thirty seconds,” the voice commanded. I needed a way out, and the only way out was the window. I was on the third floor, and the window would not open all the way. The lamp on the desk was heavy. With all my force, I slammed it into the hotel window. The impact sent glass raining to the street below. The police heard the noise and kicked in the doorway. A hotel manager cringed at the use of force. I hopped through the window out onto the ledge. I was three floors up from the ground. Normally, such a height would be suicidal, but there was a large tour bus picking up travelers. The police were halfway through the room. I leaped from the window ledge and flew through the air. It seemed to take an eternity. I hit the top of the bus and rolled. The police officers gawked from the window in disbelief. I ignored the pain from the landing and slid off the bus.

  I hit the pavement with a loud thump. My knees burned, and pain shot through my legs. The nanomachines sent painkillers through my body and quickly numbed the pain. There was a tingling sensation in my legs and kneecaps. The machines were repairing two shattered kneecaps and broken legs from the jump. They rewove the bone and reconstructed cells one molecule at a time at a breathtaking rate. I was able to hobble off, and the hobble turned into a trot. The trot turned into a run. I ran down the block to a subway tunnel entrance.

  I had planned on the possibility of a quick escape from the hotel and picked one close to a major hub. I was wise enough to choose a spot close to the subway but stupid enough to let them give me a room on the third floor. I was probably too hard on myself as I was a historian and not a secret agent. I needed to start thinking in terms of escape, especially because now the city authorities were after me and had exceptional means of tracking me.

  I pushed my way down into the subway system. The evening commuter traffic increased the density of people. The people slowed me down, but it also was going to slow the police down as well. When I got to the bottom of the initial flight of stairs to the deep underground, the police were at the top. I hopped through the turnstile and dashed into the tunnels. I pushed through the crowds and came to another set of stairs.

  The stairs went down to the platform. Rather than push myself through the crowd, when I was down far enough, I swung over the railing and jumped the rest of the way. My knee cried out in pain once again. The pain was almost too much but quickly subsided. I broke my knees again because they were still weak. The nanomachines dosed me with more painkillers. The police were hot on my trail.

  A train was at the stop. I pushed my way through the crowd into the train. The officers pursuing me made it to the ground level just as the train was leaving. I saw one of the officers turn his head to his shoulder. He radioed for backup. Officers would be waiting at the next stop, and they would have the entire train covered. I didn't plan on being on the train.

  As soon as I was cleared from the officer's sight lines, I pushed my way to the back of the train. For the most part, people helped me by stepping out of the way. People always seemed to respond to another person's sense of urgency. I was also lucky that my face probably just started to hit the warning networks. A few people may have recognized me, but they probably didn't want to get involved. Either way, there weren't any heroes on the train that day. If a private citizen tripped me up or attempted to stop me, I may have gotten caught at the next stop. I planned to be off the train before the next stop.

  Once I was at the rear of the train, I waited. The train slowed down as it rounded a sharp turn. The time was perfect. I pulled the emergency stop. It was covered with warnings about consequences for false alarms. One more charge in addition to evading arrest. It wouldn’t be the first law I had broken that day, and more than likely, it wouldn’t be the last. The train lurched to a halt. I had to act quickly.

  The emergency exit wouldn't budge. There was something locking the door while the train was in motion, and I had to wait until the train was completely halted. The people in the car panicked. Some screamed, and others tried to help me open the exit door. It was interesting how people just assumed I knew about an emergency they didn’t know about. After the train had come to a complete halt, the emergency door opened, and the alarm sounded.

  Some of the passengers who helped me followed me out the door. They weren't sure what was happening, but they assumed they were acting out of self-interest. It was fascinating to note. I bet the historian in me enjoyed observing people. They always seemed to gravitate to the person who seemed to know what they were doing. Because I was confident enough to jump off the train, others followed and flooded out the car into the tunnel with me.

  However, they stopped following me when I started down the tunnel at a jog. People would follow the confident person until that person led them into the unknown. They were scared and staying near the car was the safe choice. For me, the unknown was salvation. It offered me a way to escape the police. The people and the subway car disappeared behind me. The nanomachines switched to a night vision as the light faded from my view. The police would catch up. I planned to try and lose them in the sewers before they could catch me.

  Event 8 - N

  Nanette hopped off the train to follow 07760 down the subway tunnel. She waited until he was practically out of sight, so she could be sure he didn't notice her. She wasn't in the mood for a chase, and the element of surprise was always the best choice. Once she was certain he was out of earshot, she began to sneak after him. She wasn’t watching her step and crushed a bug. The bug died with a crunch. Some writers of the past thought that a bug would make a huge difference in the timeline. In reality, bugs didn’t make that much of a difference.

  Science fiction writers of the past used to believe that crushing a butterfly would change history millions of years later. For the most part, history kept moving forward regardless of the butterfly. If she changed history by preventing the bookseller’s murder, the only thing that would change in history would be the date of death of the bookseller. Humans needed to feel important. They need to feel like without certain humans. History would be different. If she kidnapped Stephen Hawking, another physics genius would have unraveled the mysteries of black holes. The fact was that black holes existed in the universe, and anyone with the right equipment could observe their effects. It was only a matter of time before a human figured them out. If she did kidnap Stephen Hawking, another physicist would be in the history books of her time. Thus she would
have traveled back on a branch of time and made a change. Then she would have traveled forward on another branch very similar to her own.

  A time agent didn’t need to worry about the minutia. The world would continue one bug less. However, time agents refrained from kidnapping Steven Hawking. Harming people, famous or not, was a crime in any timeline, in addition to her oath to preserve the events of time to the best of her ability. She just didn't have to worry about stepping on any butterflies.

  An important part of her job involved knowing about her personal timeline. Agents were very well versed in ancestry chains, so they could keep their timeline pure. Nanette knew a distant relative was living in Russia right now if she wanted to see a person on her personal chain. In addition to being versed with ancestry chains, she had some of the best non-lethal weaponry available, as well as memory wiping devices. Agents very rarely had to kill. In fact, they almost never did.

  People in the past used to doubt time travel's existence because they never met a time traveler. When they did meet a person who acted sort of weird, the last thing they suspected was time travel. Time travelers were abundant throughout history, and usually always took the guise of a tourist. If a person living in the past did discover the identity of a time traveler, their memory was usually wiped.

  Humanity had a sense of responsibility by the time the invention of time travel became commonly used. Most people refrained from heading to the Middle Ages with a gun so that they could rule the world. The occasional crazy person would always slip through the cracks. She was there to stop them. History recorded some time travelers who were never caught by the agency. Myths like Merlin, gods hurling lightning, prophets healing, and men riding in the sky were errant time travelers. Nanette took most myths completely seriously. Half of her job was sorting through what was just good storytelling and eyewitness accounts of a person with future technology.

  Technology always seemed to balance out. If a person did travel to the Middle Ages with a machine gun, the warlords of the time period wouldn't have the ability to manufacture another. Technology always seemed to appear in the world when there was a balance. For example, the same century that created the nuclear bomb also created the Internet. The reason humanity didn't annihilate itself was largely because of the Internet. Before the Internet, nukes were only held by a few countries with massive self-preservation interests. Those countries had the sense not to use them. By the time the nukes proliferated to a point where a common dictator with a death wish could use them, the Internet was in full operation. People were no longer isolated in their own country being warped by insular views created by closed communities and propaganda machines. Ideas spread like wildfire, and governments were unable to control them. The Internet generation grew up personally knowing people from all over the world. It was harder for governments to dehumanize their opponents. People began to view each other as people. It became harder to kill a person when they had a name and a face.

  The 1914 Christmas Truce was a good example of peace in action. Two armies from World War I climbed out of the trenches to celebrate Christmas, play soccer, and exchange gifts. Once the enemy was humanized, they couldn't strike each other the next day. They were pulled from the front lines. The Internet began to humanize the world. When people were isolated, they were taught whatever their government or elders wanted them to believe, but when people were connected, they could learn when they were fed lies. Wars became increasingly difficult to fight, at least until the great economic collapse. When people could no longer afford the necessities of life, the bloodiest wars of history ensued.

  Human civilizations rose and crumbled when they couldn't sustain themselves. The inhabitants of Easter Island used all the natural resources, and the civilization able to walk giant stone heads across an island became dust. The Mayans left cities abandoned when they used too many resources and were unable to feed the population. The United States of America crumbled when the corporate greed outweighed human need, but humans always rebuilt, and the old axiom of “those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it” eventually gave way to a better future. The world learned slowly, one brutal lesson at a time.

  As a time traveler, Nanette had a unique perspective. The lessons of the past were difficult for humanity while they were going through it, but like any teenager in their adolescence, humanity eventually learned another way. For example, the idea of superiority of one human over another because of how they were born was widespread in early human history. Humans used to collect others as slaves and trade them like property. Eventually, slavery became a thing of the past. Racial-based preference became a part of the past. A person could no longer use ethnicity as a form of superiority.

  When racial lines dissolved, societies began to declare superiority by dividing people along lines of wealth. Wealth was used to declare superiority. Those with lots of wealth sacrificed the poor people's standard of living to gain more wealth. They would often attempt to excuse their behavior by spinning a fantasy about how their workers’ lives would be worse without their companies. The fact remained that the workers were still only able to afford living worse than pets from wealthy nations. There was an inequity in the wealthy versus the poor system.

  Eventually, the system began to crack. Companies deemed too big to fail began to fail. Governments borrowed money to prevent economic collapse. The bailouts were patches on a structural problem. A building with structural integrity problems would eventually crumble no matter how many patches were made. The wealthy priced the poor out of the ability to live. The poor couldn't afford the goods and services that were keeping the rich wealthy.

  The poor countries were the first to destabilize. People began to fight for resources. The rich countries relied on the poor countries to manufacture products, so they began to destabilize when there was no more labor for cheap products. All the progress the Internet made keeping people together was lost as the poor could no longer afford the devices to keep themselves connected. People turned backward and became isolated again. The wars that dwindled began to flare again. The system collapsed and humanity devolved into chaos.

  Most of the population died from starvation and war. All the major countries crumbled. City-states rose to power. Farming technologies could convert skyscrapers into acres of farmland. Reusable power like solar energy could be harvested with special paint on the buildings and vehicles. A few major cities closed their borders. They left the rest of the population to fight, starve, and die. The city-states created self-contained societies; they were small enough to plant the seeds for Nanette’s society.

  She had to find 07760. She had to stop him. 07760 traveled to a city destined to be a city-state. The only part of the equation that didn't make sense was 07760's reasoning behind that specific moment in time. The city-state would not rise for another hundred years.

  There was a clank of metal up ahead. She saw her suspect. He was ducking into the sewer system. She waited outside of his hearing range. She didn't want to alert him to her presence. This time, there would be no mistake.

  Event 11 - R

  I ran down a large subway tunnel. From inside the train, the tunnel never seemed that long. It would take minutes from one stop to the next. On foot, the tunnel was vast and seemed like I had been running for hours. I didn’t realize the subway trains went so fast. I ran until I saw an entrance into the sewer system. I climbed out of the tunnel and into the sewers.

  The sewer was dark and extremely smelly. My vision corrected itself to the dark very quickly. My stomach did not react badly to the smell. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t feel any physical effects. The future had wonderful technology. I wondered why the nanomachines didn’t give me super strength or why I couldn’t fly.

  “It’s because we don’t need those upgrades,” a voice said from behind.

  I turned to see a beautiful woman, the woman the well-dressed man had warned about. She was wearing a pristine black suit. Her hair was tied back, and she looked ageless. Her
physical body looked like she was in her twenties, but the eyes were beyond comparison. She looked like she had the wisdom of hundreds of years. I could not put my finger on it, but I knew her in some way. “How’d you know?” I asked.

  She explained. “You were admiring the abilities of your body. It’s easy to deduce the next question. If the nanomachines can give us unlimited endurance, why not strength? But there is a reason we don’t have super strength, agility, and all the martial art skills. In our time, we don’t need it. Humanity has grown beyond petty behavior. There is no conflict, no fights; everyone is content and happy. So increasing strength does nothing when there is no one to fight.”

  “If there is no conflict, why are you still employed?”

  “I mean at the societal level. Individuals will always have conflicts.”

  “What about sports?” I asked, remembering a thing called “UFC” I saw at the hotel room. “Sports require strength and conflict.”

  “I know it’s difficult with the memory wipe, so your perception of humanity is built from this less civilized time,” she began, but I cut her short.

  “You—”

  “I authorized it.”

  I lunged toward her, but I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed but retained control of my vocals. “What did you do to me?”

  “You’ll notice that I have no weapons. I have full authorization to control the machines in your body. I am an agent.”

  “Don’t I get a phone call? A lawyer or something?”

  “There is no trial system, only reprogramming.”

  The mention of reprogramming formed a lump in my throat. I was pretty sure it was the reason I was here. My instinct told me I had to avoid it at all cost. Since I couldn’t move my only option was to keep her talking while I thought of a better plan. “What about people who are innocent? People can screw up a DNA test.”