Time Agency

by Aaron Frale

  “That part’s debatable,” I said.

  I realized that sarcasm was not the best reaction to the situation. My future self’s brow furrowed while he considered.

  “I’m not going to force your decision. But let me tell you this. Once you have your memory back, you’ll put her into the chamber yourself,” he said and as if on cue, the briefcase lock clicked open.

  “What did she do?”

  “It’s in the memory, and I will tell you what. Once you get your memories back, you can decide what to do with her. As a sign of trust, I will give you control of her.”

  I felt her presence. It was like every part of her being was under my control. I could move her limbs, make her talk, and even stop her heart. I let her go, and she gasped.

  “Don’t trust him,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because the brain scan before your wipe was disturbing. That’s why we wiped you. We found a bookshelf full of physics books. They were blank, so I had to ask what was a historian doing with physics books? So I had the brain scan focus on when you created the books. You encoded hidden messages into the books activated with nanomachines. That’s when we found plans.”

  “Plans for what?”

  “A terrorist act,” my doppelganger answered for her. “I wanted to create a nanomachine plague that would cause people to destabilize at the atomic level, and turn this whole city into a pile of gray goo.”

  “But why here?”

  “The man who invents nanomachines grew up here. You studied him in your youth,” the time agent said.

  My doppelganger added, “And normally, killing the person who discovers a scientific discovery, would just mean another person would discover it. But what if I killed a city full of people?”

  “You’re not making a good case for why I should get my memories back.”

  “People learn from their mistakes,” my doppelganger said. “I’m not proud of my past. I’m now protecting this city. That’s why I’ve built this. That’s why we have to wipe her memory of this place. There are people in the time agency seeking to undo our society. I’m doing my job to protect it.”

  I considered what he said. All I needed to do was lift the lid and touch the papers inside. I was curious, but something wasn't right. My alternate self seemed to have a flair for the dramatic. He enjoyed being in control. There was something wrong with the person. He didn't seem like me. I couldn’t deny that I also had a flair for the dramatic. Back at the clothing store, I slipped into an alternate identity. I talked my way out of more than one situation. But now that I was confronted with myself, I didn’t like it. Projecting a potential false image wasn’t fun when someone did it to me.

  The curse of time travel is that I could be confronted with aspects of my personality I never wanted to deal with. Perhaps I did enjoy manipulating others for my own benefit. It seemed crafty when I was doing it and sadistic when I watched my future self do it. Maybe losing my memory was good for me.

  “Everything you need to know is in the case,” he said reassuringly and smiled.

  My future self was attempting to manipulate me. He presented the same false smile that I produced every time I talked myself out of a situation. The people at the clothing store, the cooks at the restaurant, and every person I attempted to bullshit. I gave them that smile. It was my trademark false sense of authenticity. I needed to test my future self. If my doppelganger lied to me, then he didn’t care at all about my free will, and if he was truthful, I should consider his words more carefully before dismissing them based on my trademark bullshit smile. I said, “Before I do it, I have to verify a few things.”

  “Don’t trust yourself?” My doppelganger eyed me. “My life is your life.”

  “In college, I went to a party…”

  “In the ’70s.”

  “There was this girl.”

  “Farrah Fawcett and she ended up with that Chisel-Jaw. Trust me. I wanted her too. I am you.”

  He seemed to be me, but someone could have researched the incident and inferred the romantic longing. I didn’t have much else. He was offering me a chance to get it all back. And even if there were some implanted memories, it would still be memories. Every day since my awakening on the street corner, I’ve had to rediscover everything. If I encountered a book that I’ve read and even if it was my favorite book, I would have to read it again to see if I liked it. I didn’t want to discover myself. I wanted to know myself, and he was offering that. His offer was tempting. But something told me to ask one more question. “What was the message I left for myself?”

  “The what?” my future self asked.

  “In the book titles. What message did I leave for myself?” He was confused. He didn’t remember the book titles. It would be hard to forget a project like that. It must have taken me months to collect all the books and a lot of time to design the books for the message. It wasn’t a simple way of transferring information through memory wipes, so it must have been important. My future self must have remembered it. But he didn’t. He was confused.

  I realized just how important the books were. The book titles were a very clever design. They were all physics. But I was a historian. And on my initial view of the books, I didn’t notice the detail, but thinking about it now, there were some non-physics related titles in the mix. In fact, several were coded with the familiar history tag. However, there was something about the titles. I racked my brain to remember the titles.

  There was a knock at the door. Two of the fighters we encountered earlier at the trashcan fire stepped into the room. Both looked homeless and really mean. Machine guns were slung on their back. My future self glared at them for interrupting the meeting.

  “Explain yourself,” he demanded.

  “We captured him, but he escaped. We tried to…” one of the men began and sputtered to a halt.

  “I don’t want excuses.” My doppelganger's eyes narrowed.

  “Should I form a search party?” the other man asked.

  “I like that idea! This is a man of action.” My doppelganger turned to me and smiled. “You have to reward those who think.”

  The first man’s skin went pale. My doppelganger put his arms around both of them. My future self looked sleazy when he smiled. I’d have to work on that. “Turns out that I need to take care of some business. You should get your memories back so that we can have a longer chat.” They left the room, and I felt my body tense. The nanomachines from my future-self were taking control again.

  It was already too late, but I figured out how to solve the puzzle of the titles. It was so easy; it was almost silly. The history books weren’t the name of history books at all. They all had names like Don’t Listen, Future, and Lying to You. When I ignored all of the physics books and strung together the titles of the history books, they created a sentence. Don’t listen to your future self. He’s lying to you! The time agent began to move toward the chamber like a puppet learning to walk.

  Event 3 - N

  Outside the reprogramming center, her protégé gave her a look before he disappeared. His eyes told a story of love and betrayal. It was a gaze that cut through to her core. She hated and loved him more than he could know. She would now have to hunt him down and reprogram his memories. Despite the assurance that the reprogrammed are the same person minus the defect, she knew he would never be the same. He would be a shell of the person he once was because he would forget about Russia. She made the choice for him. She’d grown to like his banter, the sexual tension, and the memories. She regretted not disappearing when they could. They could have escaped Russia, lived in post-war Europe, and died in history.

  She stumbled to a halt, and an agent running behind her crashed into her, sending her and others into a massive clump of bodies on the pavement. A nurse beginning her shift approached them to see if they were ok. Nanette picked herself out of the pile. The agent who created the collision looked embarrassed.

  “You bury that emotion right now before
I drag you inside and reprogram you myself,” Nanette threatened. The agent dialed back his embarrassment to a neutral expression. He looked as if he was straining to keep it blank. Satisfied, she turned to the other agents.

  “Hypothesis!” she barked.

  “He time jumped,” one agent offered.

  “That’s obvious. The question is when?” she glared.

  Another agent was bold enough to claim, “Ancient Egypt. The stone and brick work could hide him from…”

  “So we should send agents back to every ancient culture who made buildings from clay or stone?” she chided.

  The agents fell silent. Nothing they said would please her, and she simply wanted to focus her pent up anger on the agents. For a profession that prided the ability to hide emotion, there were odd ways to express emotion. Bullying underlings was simply a way to help the anger dissipate without showing outright displays of emotion. She wanted one of them to make a moronic comment. It was no wonder why she didn’t pick any of these clowns to be her protégé. They were weak and incompetent.

  “We do what we normally do. We look at history. There has to be a record of them somewhere. We can also check the security feed for the reprogramming chambers. There may be an indication of their destination in the feed,” she commanded. In an old form of entertainment called a movie, all the agents would scramble to carry out her orders. Instead, their eyes glazed over as their nanomachines began to work on her orders. They were eerily still and unaware of their surroundings as they put their full concentration on the task.

  Once she was satisfied that they were all dedicating their time wisely, she decided to check the security feed. She walked up to the reprogramming building and touched her hand to the wall. The marble was smooth and cold to the touch. The extra security in the reprogramming center meant that no signal could get in or out. She had to interact directly with the computer in the building. Once nanointerfacing became standard, graphical user interfacing became obsolete. Keyboards, mice, and touchscreens became a thing of the past. Access points were some of the last holdouts. Even though people could control any device with thought, people still felt the need to touch objects, so the reprogramming building had places to touch to interact with the computer.

  Entire objects became access points. Computers became sleek squares and even objects such as art, plants, and even chairs. Soon even the need for an external computer fell away as the nanomachines became more powerful. The buildings themselves became the machines, and they fused nanomachines into materials such as concrete and marble. If a task was complex, the nanomachines shared the processing power much like quantum computers. Soon nanomachines became more common than bacteria. They regulated the health of people and animals. Building’s structures were maintained by nanomachines and simultaneously used as processing power for computers. When a person needed more calculating power than the machines in their body, they could put objects, animals, and buildings to work.

  The reprogramming complex was cut off from other nanomachines. People could still have them in their bodies, but if the machines left the body and tried to get into the building, they would be destroyed. There was no molecule allowed on any building surface that wasn't part of the original structure. A side effect was that cleaning crews, robot or otherwise, were not needed. If a piece of trash was left in the building, it was incinerated the next morning. The building was like a void in the network of the planet Earth. It was almost like it didn't exist.

  She needed to touch a part of the building to access the security footage. The security was so tight that after she had finished interfacing with the building, the nanomachines used to interface were destroyed. Her nanomachines began to self replicate. All she needed to do to restore her machines was walk through the air. Most trace atoms in the environment could be collected and broken down for the construction of new machines. Once her limit of machines had reached their maximum capacity set by her mass, they would stop replicating to prevent the gray goo scenario that terrified early naysayers of the technology.

  The footage from the security feed in the reprogramming building’s computer was what she expected. Her protégé was helping 07760 and transferring information via the nanomachines through body-to-body contact. She couldn't monitor the transfer of information, but she saw him experiencing a great amount of pain. She felt a stab of empathy because of her deep feelings for him, but none of it registered on her face. She had the cool stare of an experienced agent.

  She was struck by what she saw. Her emotions threaten to burst from her cool exterior. She did not like to see him in pain, but she could not stop watching. It was almost as if she was waiting for the end to make sure he would be fine. She struggled to comprehend why Jerry would take such a big risk for 07760. The prisoner was a high-risk terrorist.

  07760’s apartment was bare when they arrested him except a bookshelf. People didn’t read much anymore. Most people preferred the interactive entertainment of the grayspace. People loved to pretend they were people they were not. Once nanomachines and grayspace modules made the idea of assuming an alternate identity on a whim a reality, people would be clerks, nurses, and even agents in the real world but in grayspace, they went on quests, solved mysteries, and had adventures. People created grayspace clubs where they would slay dragons together.

  Nanette preferred grayspace for its unique crime scene re-creation ability. Hers was private and protected by the agency. She gamed occasionally but preferred the satisfaction of her job over a fictional world. She used gaming to keep her abilities sharp. She could see why most of the population liked to escape. Reality was a struggle, and even though she had been trained to bury her emotions, love brought both pain and joy.

  Before her emotion showed itself, she almost turned off the replay, but he stopped writhing in pain. He was now moving as if he had a purpose, stronger than before. She could read the move from uncertainty to certainty. The pain had convinced him of his path. If this had been a training exercise, she would have scolded him. But since it wasn’t, she had to question if the pain was a form of coercion or something different. The question was moot since either would end in reprogramming. Victims of coercion or crimes ended up in the reprogramming chambers too, so their emotional pain would be eliminated. Whether he was a victim or volunteer only mattered for her personal peace of mind.

  She found the clue to his whereabouts in the footage. Her protégé leaned over to examine 07760 and by his movements, she could tell he was in the process of discovery. He moved back, and the security camera finally got a view of what he had seen. Burnt into 07760’s chest were time coordinates. 07760’s nanomachines were reactivating and healing the scar tissue. But she got enough to know the day and place. The time was partially faded. But minutes away was close enough.

  She didn’t wait for the other agents to catch up to her thought process. They were slow and stupid by her standards. She wouldn’t need them, and it would give her a chance to meet Jerry in the past and have a conversation without prying ears. Her agency could monitor everything to the cellular level in the present. But in the past, they could only take readings of the bio state when the agent returned. Biology left markers of activity long after the activity. Fights, sex, and even stress left traces in the body. The conversation shouldn’t leave a mark so long as she remained calm. She resolved to talk. Her agency didn’t need to know. She owed him a chance to explain. She had blinked out of the future before the other agents noticed.

  _______

  Nanette felt the air pushing into her lungs. Time travel wasn't exactly pleasant, but she was used to its effects. The body would disappear. Only her biomass registered by her nanomachines would go back in time. She could also bring some limited items such as clothes and some personal devices. Everything else was left in the future, including the air in her lungs. Less experienced agents would gasp the moment they stepped into the past. She let the air trickle back slowly.

  The time travel protocols helped prevent infectious
diseases from the future. Native American populations were decimated by European settlers bringing harmful bacteria with them. The Europeans had lived with the diseases, so they were fairly resistant. The Native Americans had no resistance, so they died. Time travelers had to suffer a few discomforts to safeguard the people in the past. There would at least be no disease hiding in the air in her lungs. The virus and bacteria that were infectious couldn't live in the body of a person from her time because the nanomachines attacked diseases when they entered the body.

  Agents were the only exception to the disease free world. During training, their bots were switched off. She was infected with Ebola, SARS, AIDS, and other nasty infections. Each agent was brought to the point of near death and then revived by the nanomachines. The agents referred to the process as humanizing. She always mused if dying from disease was human, then there were no real humans from her time. The training did help her empathize. While emotion was buried and logic employed as a guiding principal, empathy could be used to map out the motivations of an individual. Agents needed to understand humans.

  She opened her eyes, and she was on a busy street. There were a bookstore and a café across the street. People bustled around her. When time travel was first invented, people had to appear in dark alleys and out of the way places. As the technology progressed, people could appear on busy street corners. The vast network of nanomachines from her time would calculate the precise moment when no one was looking. The calculation was so accurate that a person could appear on a stage overlooking a crowded room. People could only conjecture about the presence of time travelers. They would look at photographs of historical events. If a background person was in one photograph and not the others, that person could be a time traveler or may have gotten up to use the bathroom. When people in the past claimed to have found a time traveler, even if they did discover one, it was easy to debunk because no one ever caught the actual moment of travel.