The Protectorate

Old story, written back in 2004. Review at your own risk.

The Protectorate

I knew it was going to be a bad jump when I was collecting my gear this morning. Any member would be eager to volunteer to a jump back to Arizona in 2004, but the sad look in the jumpmaster's one good eye made me reconsider volunteering. Being the senior member of the team doesn’t always mean that I get the easy jumps, sometimes I get the bad cases as well…and this was one of those times, most likely a removal mission.

I grabbed my gear bag and approached the jumpmaster. “Tough one today?”

“Yep, this one is going to be rough. The assignment is really tough,” he flips through a stack of papers and hands me the package I need, “but the landing zone is worse. Take care when you enter realspace. You can wait in the jumpbay until it is your turn.”

“Thanks. I’ll bring you a souvenir if possible.“

The long walk to the bay gives me plenty of time for reflection…today my thoughts turn to why I chose this job. It takes a special person to volunteer for this type of work, some say we are not entirely sane for choosing this profession…sometimes I have to agree. It’s been 20 years since the nuclear war and only 10 years since the quantum-time mainframe came online. In that time, it has detected a large reversal of the prior events due to our successful jumps. Each jump into the past has managed to realign the future so that billions of people do not have to die in the war. Each time I jump, I wonder if this could be the last jump anyone has to make. No one really knows for sure…we all assume the mainframe will tell us when we have changed the past enough to affect the future.

I wonder if we will just cease to exist at that moment, or if we will spend the rest of our natural lives in the “bubble”. No one told me that once I entered the bubble I could never leave. It makes sense though - our actions in the past change the future and the egg-heads believe that if someone left the bubble, the damage they would do to the so called “space-time” continuum would unravel the fabric of reality. Yeah...Right. I think they just have a hard time finding volunteers.

Unlike the jumpmaster’s area, the ‘bay was a model of efficiency. The techs had their job down to a science, so much so there was no need for conversation. I handed my jump orders to the tech that was to escort me inside my cube. Once inside, I changed into the clothing that had been selected for me; shorts, boots, a t-shirt, and 100 feet of climbing rope. I sat in the chair and waited until the jump computers were able to lock onto the correct target. As the red light switched from red to green, I prepared myself for the jolt that always accompanies the jump. Not quite an electric shock, it’s more like leaving my body and then jumping back in.

My years of experience were what saved me. I never thought the jump would leave me on the peak of a mountain. My first instinct was to step forward, as most jumpers do when moving through time, but had I done that I would have landed hundreds of feet below. I took a moment to look around and realized that I had been here before as a young man, when the air was safe to breath and I still had time for rock climbing.

One of the rules of the jump was that we could not open our orders until we entered realspace on the other side. That way, we did not know if we were going to save someone or “remove” them. Finding a safe place to sit, I cut the orders open and let the contents slide into my hands. Some people rush to see what and who they are to handle, I prefer to savor the moment. I take my time to read the report first and only then will I study the picture of my target. This time, my target is a 20-something male that loves rock climbing. According to his report, he will come into contact with a female in the future who will participate in actually starting the war by urging the president to launch our arsenal before it was too late. The mainframe believes that there is a 95% probability that his removal would change this woman’s fate enough that she will not influence the president.

“Well, I guess that settles it…I’m on a removal mission”. As much as I hate removal missions, I know that I have no choice but to proceed. The mainframe will not detect the change in the timeflow if I fail. If the change is not detected, then it will not issue the order to have me recalled to the “bubble”, and I would quickly die within a day here in the past. The scientist have not been able to explain why, but jumpers never lasted long in the past…that is why we are sent to a very specific time and place. No one wants to waste time looking for their target.

I return the report to the envelope and slowly remove the picture of my target. I never expected to find a picture of myself. Can I really kill my past-self to protect the future? If not, I’ll just die here anyway. If I do kill my past-self, will I return to the future? If I don’t kill my past-self, will I get stuck in some type of time-loop and always return to this point? According to the scientists, we are always safe inside the bubble…but they never mentioned what might happen to us in the past. I decide to sit here and stare at clouds until my past-self appears…then I will make my choice.