Remember the Future

Pitter-patter dash and scatter or, make some noise and get out fast, split up if in a group and phase-jump a safe distance to coordinate rendezvous. It’s much quicker to just say pitter-patter dash and scatter. Little-clock knew the drill, but phasing into a new time always made her nervous. Would there be witnesses to deal with upon shift down? If so, there could be immediate conflict. There were thousands of potential variables to watch for and she knew there was no way to be ready for them all. She just hoped that all the years of training in the sims would prove beneficial again as they had so many times before.

Fifteen seconds to transition.

These were the moments which drew consciousness through the maelstrom. To transition one’s body must be broken down to quantum particles and projected by probabilistic injectors through the dark space to whatever timeline, time and universal parallel Central had decided needed fixing. No one escaped the transition jitters. It really makes you wonder whether you actually exist. As Little-clock understood it, we are all only probabilities bound together by consciousness. Spooky, but important to remember as those few seconds after transition were vital to a successful reintegration.

Little-clock checked that her slim-suit was functioning properly and that her backup psychocellulator was fully charged. The slim-suit was to contain her probabilistic particles throughout the deconstruction process and the psychocellulator to assimilate what remained after something so violent as ripping through the fabric of space-time. Humans had been using this technique to traverse the cosmos for millennia already, but still understood very little as to how it worked, they just new it did and humans, being as they are, could not abandon this powerful technology just because it could potentially be dangerous and could possibly wipe out existence one day. Plus, if it weren’t for quantum transition, society wouldn’t have advanced to the level it had and corrections to the records would never have been made, although, one could argue that for quantum transition to work, the previous existence of quantum transition would be necessary and so we enter a paradox.

Today we enter Austria and I take a job as housemaid to one, Alois Schicklgruber, customs civil servant. She thought the words, but they were transmitted to Vogel and Matriil via sic-link implants surgically placed at birth, a common practice in pca32,675 or 32,675 years post common era. Be sure the opacity is turned down on your slim-suits prior to transition. There is only one Klara and I’m sure no one in 1876, Holocaust timeline, Maxillary Parallel, Austria will believe one of you two brutes to be her, so stay sharp and out of site.

Vogel and Matriil are bio-manipulators which were assigned to Little-clock years before at her swearing in ceremony to the League of Transients. Bio-manipulators are sets of personalities which get linked to a cadet’s profile upon graduation from the academy. These personalities provide a base ‘ground’ for the graduate’s psychocellulator aiding in backup and recovery. They serve as friends of a sort who also bring mission specific benefits in that one will always have one’s assistants and secretaries, weapons experts, cartographer, huntsman, you name it, neatly tucked away within their extended consciousness. As an added bonus, these bio-manipulators can also be loaded into surrogate bodies and used as bodyguards, soldiers and the like.

Back in her school days Little-clock was known by her name as given at birth, Marigold, Marigold Crystalhorne. She was only later nicknamed Little-clock after the ancient old Earth genus of marigold flowers known as Calendula or in Latin, ‘little clock’, so named for the clock-like faces the flowers of that genus possess. It was Matriil who voiced it first, a name of endearment given to Marigold by him after she saved the lives of an entire League of Transients entourage by accurately calculating nine transitional phase-jumps in under 16.275 seconds while escaping an ambush of Lateral Parallel time guerrillas.

Five seconds to transition.

Blink

The com light on Little-clock’s virtual visor blinked a steady red beat in time with the ticking of her heart. It always reminded her of the Fall-bug’s red and yellow pulse as they bobbed around in the cool air of dusk behind the house where she grew up. Now that she was older she couldn’t help but notice the allusion the Fall-bugs made to the very probabilistic particles which any second now would simultaneously exist and not exist in their race across galaxies.

Three, two -

Hold fast. It was Vogel. New orders incoming from Central.

What are they saying? Little-clock shifted her stance and keyed the com to wind down injector spin up and await further command.

Vogel continued, Central has re-assessed probable outcomes of the mission and feels certain there will be less descendant bloom mutation if you only dissuade Klara from taking the job or convince Alois he doesn’t need a housemaid at this time instead of eliminating Klara and taking her place.

Well that was close. We were two seconds from transition. Central is getting sloppy lately. Visibly agitated, Little-clock paced the safe-room and ran the mission through her mind. This one was important. She accessed the com and disabled sharing within her sic-link application. She needed a moment to herself to reorganize the mission in her mind. Vogel transferred Central’s updated mission protocol which scrolled in holographic blue in Little-clock’s display. Phase-jump to Austria, 1875, Holocaust timeline, Maxillary parallel. A year earlier. We’re going to try and anticipate Alois’ need for a housemaid and hopefully find Klara another house to serve under before any romantic engagement ensues between the two. She knew if nothing were done, Alois Schicklgruber , who would later change his name to Alois Hitler, would marry his niece or second cousin - the record is not clear - and father a son, Adolf Hitler who would go on to commit genocide upon the Jewish people of Earth of that timeline.

Never before had Little-clock been tasked with such an important mission. The past two centuries had been spent reworking specific moments within the records in hopes of once and for all eradicating racial bias, this being, of course, a very tall order, but Central knew it to be paramount to the survival of humanity. They knew that if they could remove Adolf Hitler from the records then many generations would be spared the then popularized ideology of white supremacy from permeating their neighborhoods. The idea came up one day while council was being held at Central in regard to conspiracy theories held by many Americans of the United States, 21st century, Holocaust timeline, Maxillary Parallel. The conspiracy theory in question was one of particular bad taste in which the conspirators claim the Holocaust did not happen, that somewhere upwards of 17million people didn’t lose their lives for one man’s megalomania. Upon examining this, council decided they didn’t find that to be too bad an idea, eliminate the man, eliminate the holocaust.

Little-clock knew from years of experience that the changes she makes to the record very rarely culminate in the outcome prescribed by central and very likely she will have to make repeated trips to correct minor blemishes left behind by the paradox created in her initial transition. She also knew there was a probability in each and every transition that she might cause what they call a ‘profound paradox,’ the kind that could blink out years or even centuries of progress with a single stroke. Eradicating racial bias, she knew, would be worth the risk even if she had to go back twenty times.

Turning her sic-link sharing back on she glanced through her cloud memory for an image of her father. He was tall, dark skinned and handsome with large ears, which fit him well as he was a good listener. Although racial bias had been nearly eradicated within her own time it still posed a serious threat to those who chose to enter the League of Transients and Little-clock’s father had found out the hard way just how dangerous it could be when he was mistaken as a runaway slave in 1822 on a remote island known in other timelines as Haiti and was hung for his alleged crime. It was because of this that she joined the League of Transients and it was because of this that she fought hard to earn the title she now held, Commander of Field Operations for Racial Injustices, League of Transients.

Just then Matriil interjected Little-clock’s thoughts. We have communication from Central. Operations are go. Commence spin-up to transition.

Little-clock said a silent prayer for her father, less a prayer than a promise, and walked back the previous mission protocol, replacing it with the current strand. Prepare for spin-up to transition and remember, opacity set to zero. Look sharp, we only get one shot.

She keyed the sequence which would take them back over 30,000 years and across three timelines to a Europe in which life was simpler and people hadn’t yet realized their obligation to the futures.