“If I want to leave?” I asked.
“No problem. You can retain any memories you wish, or none at all. There is a mental block put in place, so that you would be incapable of divulging any details at all.”
“How does that work?”
“I honestly don’t know, as the science is not my field, but I believe that a command is structured deep in your subconscious, so no matter how hard you attempt to either say or otherwise impart the knowledge, you would always fail.”
“If I take a contract in the future, what is to stop me winning a fortune on a horse race or lottery when I return?”
Michael smiled, so I knew that this must be a frequently asked question.
“There are laws and rules. It is against the law, so should you attempt anything like that, you would find an agent, like yourself, blocking any attempt to do so.”
“How about my new identity, how do you select it?”
“You will be given the identity of an actual person from history, who, for whatever reason, no longer needs it. There will be risks, but in essence, it has proved to be more effective than creating new individuals with no past or record. We have a large research department scouring history, locating and verifying suitable identities and maintaining a database that we can utilise at a moment’s notice. It seems our enemies are not in possession of such a supply of ‘real’ identities to draw upon, so we are wary of people with no records. They use the new person method, so are easier to trace. They also tend to use agents that are only in a given era for a short time to complete one task at a time, like an assassination or similar. Our agents are deeply embedded in the time line for some time before the target event and often remain long after it. There are advantages to this, as they can operate as liaison officers for other agents in emergency situations, or they can deal with a series of events as and when they occur.”
I smiled, it all sounded so weird.
“So, say I go back and stop someone killing, say for example - George Washington when he was just a kid, what's to stop them sending someone else and then someone else until the job is done?”
“Two things. Firstly you'll be there at that precise moment, so they'd have to choose another time frame; secondly, it is enormously expensive in energy, resources and time to follow such a course of action. You see, our agents live in the time zone all the time, for the length of that agent's natural life, whereas the enemy drop in to do a job and then try to get out again. We know they have limited resources, so they normally only get one bite at any particular cherry, so to speak.”
“Surely they could go back to the day before I was there to stop them?”
“Yes they could, but you see, we'll know about it, and you or another agent would get prior warning.”
This was all too heavy for me, so I sat there trying to make sense of it all.
“Well?” he asked.
I thought about my life and everything that had happened to me to get to where I was. I had nothing to lose and, it seemed, only a lot to gain.
“Just as a matter of interest, how many agents are there?”
“In the field?”
“I don’t know, just agents, I guess.”
“In the field at any one time, we have in the region of about eighty to a hundred thousand, but off duty, so to speak, another one hundred and thirty thousand. There is a lot of time to cover, but once in an era, we can communicate with the agent if a new event should arise, even if it is before the one for which the agent was tasked.”
My brain hurt with the details. I didn’t know if that was a lot or not. I suppose when one looks at the enormous expanse of human history, it wasn’t that many.
“How many of the opposition are out there?”
“That’s a hard one. They have far less, as they’re the interlopers and saboteurs. We think about two thousand, but there may be more.”
I nodded, as even I could see that we had to be lucky all the time, yet they needed only to be lucky once. I smiled, as I already thought in terms of the word, ‘we’.
“One last question.”
“Yes?”
“How do I know you’re the good guys?”
He burst out laughing.
“Wonderful. Oh, Ed, you are classic. The answer is simple. Our aims and objectives are set out in our charter and constitution. We exist to uphold the balance of truth and to maintain the laws of time. We are equipped and financed through a complex system, which has its origins lost in the mists of time. All employees are free to leave at any time, as our main concern is to protect the established time line from any interference or aberration. Those we oppose seek to alter history by murder and other criminal activity.”
“Do you have any contact with any legitimate government of any nation, like the President of the United States?”
“No, none at all, for the simplest reason that there will always be a temptation to manipulate our services for a particular national interest. So, for example, it may have been possible to go back and remove Hitler, but that wouldn’t have been in line with our charter, even though many lives could have been saved, we just can’t change history, no matter how much we would like to.”
“Surely our mere presence could be construed as interference?” I pointed out.
“Excellent point, Ed, I’m impressed you picked up on that. In a way, it is, but as you will see, all agents assume the identity of a real person, who has perhaps died prematurely, yet our research shows that they may actually have lived longer. This signifies that the life was concluded by an agent.”
This was all so weird.
I thought about my life as it was and my life as it was probably going to be.
What did I have to lose?
Nothing.
What did I have to gain?
I smiled and made my mind up.
“Where do I sign?” I asked.
“You don’t. We knew you would join. Welcome aboard.” Michael held out his hand, so I shook it.
“Can I ask when you are from?” I asked.
“I’m from twenty-second century England. After the Islamic wars of 2102 and 2105, Britain joined the United States of Europe. Five years later, at the time the Chinese took over Japan and the eastern end of Russia, the British fought and won independence from Europe, and then toyed at becoming the fifty sixth US state, after Ontario and British Columbia from Canada.”
“No shit?” I said with a grin.
“No, it didn’t. There was a national referendum, and by a majority of two million, elected to remain independent and free. It remained so up to the twenty-fourth century, to my knowledge.”
“How far do we go up to?”
“At present there is a time block on the twenty-fifth century. That is to say, we can’t even go past it with constructs, and nothing appears to be able to come back from it.”
“What’s the world like, up then?”
Michael smiled. “Different,” he said, enigmatically.
“In what way?”
“Well, you would find it rather boring by your standards. For a start, there’s no oil or natural resources left, so all power comes from solar, hydro, wind, waves or small fusion plants. The population is about one tenth of what it was in your day, while national, racial and linguistic divisions have been demolished.”
“So there’s peace?”
“Not exactly, but there isn’t the same type of armed warfare as you’d relate to,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, fully, but it seems that it’s more a social problem. Those with wealth and power are keen on retaining it at the expense of those who don’t. So, we see social unrest and a large gulf between those with and those without.”
“So greed is still number one pain in the ass?” I asked.
“Very astutely put, yes.”
“Am I restricted when I can work?”