He laid there, an innocent baby, plump red cheeks, soft alabaster skin, and fine brown hair dusting the top of his head. He was my assignment, he was my target but with the gun heavy in my hand and mind whirling I found it difficult to raise the weapon.
He was a dangerous man in 2050; he had killed 89, people a record in America. He had a cunning mind and managed to outsmart the FBI; he blended in like a shadow against the black of night and killed in the most gruesome ways, leaving panic in his wake.
But this was just a baby, innocent, and uncorrupted. There had to be a time in his life that made him who he turned out to be, a man is not born evil it’s the events in his life that make him evil.
The timer on my wrist shocked again, time was warning me, telling me I did not belong here. Time travel was tricky and dangerous, some men are not able to handle the pain sometimes the space time continuum will rip a man in two if he travels too far, this little shock was nothing compared to what some men have endured.
“James you don’t have time for this, get it over with.” My boss shrieked from my ear piece, this was my assignment and it would save hundreds. That’s what we’ve been taught from training, kill them while there blameless to save the future innocents.
I raised my gun, silencer in place and let the shot ring out through my body, it vibrated from my hand up to my head and down to my toes. It should affect me more, but I have been desensitized, this was not my first kill and it won’t be my last.
***************

The pain shot through my arm, originating from the watch and vibrating up my arm and then spreading through the rest of my body like food coloring in water. The pain wasn’t just on the outside; it seeped through your skin and into your bones. It felt like tiny ants crawling through your veins nipping and tearing as they went. Once the ants had left your body, fire drifted from your heart catching the rest of your blood on fire, burning you from the inside out.
It was painful and exhausting, but never the same for each person. One of my coworkers described the sensation as falling from the top of a sky scrapper, thrilling at first, fun even, until impact. Instead of a steady flow of pain his came all at once like your body crushing on the side walk from the long fall. Sometimes when he returned he would lie on the ground for hours waiting for the pain to subside. One woman described it as giving birth to triplets, but all three are coming out at the same moment.
They told us at first you may think it was all mental and if you were in the right frame of mind you could overcome the pain. This was in fact not true, they proved this to us by showing videos of men and women being torn in half or limbs ripped from their bodies. That same day 20 students dropped out.
I grasped my wrist, a human reflex when you’re hurting, to grab the originating point of pain. It does absolutely nothing but it sooths the mind for a slight moment. Any normal human being would call out for pain killers of morphine; however the Company does not allow this, stating it would be too easy to get addicted or kill our kidneys with the amount of pills it would take to ease the pain. They discovered this back in the late 2000’s when the technology started to develop. More men died from kidney failure than from the actual limb tarring. Each unit claims to have found a way to “ease” the pain, my unit swears by lemons.
Finn, the man who described the sensation as jumping off a building, lays on the ground not moving then sucks on lemons until he passes out. Adele the woman who describes it as triplet childbirth takes a bubble bath with lemon oils. And I drink lemonade until my bladder about hits my lungs.
Most likely lemons do jack s***, but just having that thought in your head when the pain hits, that something will help ease it, is enough for us to believe in the almighty healing powers of lemons.
I grasped my wrist again tarring open my eyes to look around for my lemonade. Adele was standing right next to me, drink in hand. She wordlessly handed it to me, and while I chugged she gently removed the watch from my wrist. I hadn’t noticed the sizzling watch that moments ago was resting on my skin. “You’re going to want to put some aloe on that.” She studied the watch for a moment turning it over in her hands, “I think this one is done, circuits fired.”
She handed the useless metal over to one of the many faceless workers running about. I think that one was named Scott or Steven, god maybe Stella, they all wear the same white jumpsuits it’s hard to tell female from male.
I then took notice of Adele’s state of dress; her red hair was damp and clinging to her neck, and she only wore a black robe with matching slippers, and I smelled the lingering scent of lemon, she traveled today. “Where did they send you today?” my voice was strained and feeble but Adele smiled at the effort, “Not too far, just a few months ago actually.” That explained how she was able to walk around and focus on other peoples pain.
That was one of the great things about Adele, she was one of the few selfless people left in the world, she could be withering in pain, and still manage to greet her fellow operatives when they return from a mission. I took a closer look at her and noticed the dark circles under her eyes, the tinted red hue surrounding her pupil, and the slight shaking of her right hand were a watch once laid. She was lying she went further than a couple of months.
“Please don’t lie to me, how far did you go?” she averted her eyes and slowly picked at the nonexistent dirt under her nails, her brow scrunching up. “Their reevaluating my contract.” That simple sentence said it all; the Traveler’s wanted to fire her.
The Traveler’s is a complicated company; it’s the longest running company to date, unbeknownst to civilians. It got its start in 2001, soon after 9/11. A group of scientist’s and politics got together and started discussing the fears they had about the future of America. The scientist’s believed Iraq, China, and Russia weren’t being completely honest with the kind of weapons they were developing. The scientists thought that each country had a new bigger atomic bomb, and America was falling behind in the weapons race.
Now everyone knows that when you put trigger happy scientists and politics in the same room, some stupid idea is gonna come out of it. But these chaps didn’t come up with a bigger bomb or an intimidating speech, or even new military tactics; no they came up with the idea of a time machine.
At that point in time if any outsider were to hear that conversation people would think they needed to be medicated, but with time the technology followed that idea, and the time machine started to develop. Of course it had many kinks, so many kinks that a “safe” prototype wasn’t produced until 2067. Margo Thalem was the first person to “travel”, she was sent back one week as a trial. She made it alright, but she made it in pieces. So it was back to the drawing board, it was 10 years later when Thomas King became the first person to travel and survive, he only lost a leg during the travel, a great feet seeing as before him 68 other people had died from their limbs being torn off. The whole limb tarring thing was never really fixed; it was improved but never fixed.
The first time that a person traveled any real amount of time was in 2100, by Janet Burro. Janet was able to travel back one year, with all limbs safely attached and she saved her husband from chocking on his dinner. The only problem with this travel was that it was never approved, the council never gave it the seal of approval, Janet jumped into a travel pod when no one was looking and altered history. This did not sit well with the council; they were always concerned with the butterfly affect and deemed that Janet must be fired.
This was when the Travelers came up with how they should fire people. The council was very concerned that in the state of rage that people would be in after being fired that they would go and blab the big secret of the Traveler’s to the world or worse to our enemies. The council could not have that, so the only way they could keep the company safe was to make the employee disappear.
At first they talked about making their own jail underground, but that was just too expensive, then they discussed dropping them off on an island, but then there was the risk that they could get off. Then one day a genius by the name of Willard Hampel came up with the idea of travel as punishment. Now Willard never came right out and said kill the person, no he said send them far enough back that even the idea of time travailing would have a person sent to the crazy house. But everyone knew that you would have to go back to the 1900’s for that. That was exactly what Willard wanted, traveling that amount of time meant certain death, a person would be torn apart instantly and then get so eaten up by the space time continuum that there would only be a pink mist when the person finally reached the wanted year.
Word got out that this is how they fired people so to stop people from running away when the whispers started about someone getting fired, the council now uses words like “taking some time off” “reevaluating your contract” or “taking a leave of absence”. They used these words because sometimes they really did give you time off or needed to talk about your contract, the word fired was dead to the council. I completely understand Adele’s nerves at this moment.
“You haven’t done a single thing out of protocol; they probably just want to talk to you.” Even to me my voice sounded unsure. “How far back did they send you?” Adele averted her eyes again, but I caught the watery look in them before she turned. “Last week they sent be back to 2020, nothing I couldn’t handle, but today they sent me to 1998, I- I can still feel the…” she stopped short and closed her arms around herself. No traveler likes to show emotion, not even pain; emotions meant weakness, weakness meant you couldn’t do your job right.
Adele was one of the best on my team, she did her job quickly and flawlessly, she hardly ever complained, and she made it a point to take care of the rest of us when we returned from a trip. It wasn’t like she cooed over us while placing little kisses on our booboos but she was always standing by with lemonade or lemon wedges to suck on. Sometimes she would sit by us as we lay unmoving on the ground just talking to us, trying to get our minds off the pain, and I swear sometimes it actually worked.
She then quickly put a smile on her face and grasped my good hand, “come, Finn has something he wanted to show us.” She was changing the topic, keeping her mind off the pain, just what they trained up to do.
“Adele, it’s okay to be afraid, you can talk to me.” She kept pulling me along, until I yanked back so she stood in front of me. “It’s okay to feel. It’s okay to be angry and hurt, just please talk to me.” I expected her to blow me off like she normally would; claiming she was fine and yammer on about the fantastic thing Finn wanted to show us. But instead she dropped her wall for a moment; she put down her guard and crashed her body into mine. Her slender arms wrapped around my neck, while her face hid in my neck. Her warm breath was jagged and broken while sobs ran through her body. Hot salty tears jumped from her eyes to the collar of my shirt.
If this was any other person I would awkwardly pat his or her back and say something completely uncomforting, but this was Adele and my body seemed to know exactly how to react. I didn’t waste a moment, the second her body hit mine, my arms were wrapped just as tightly around her torso as hers were around my neck. Normally I wouldn’t know where to keep my head or what to say, it’s really confusing do you look up and avoid eye contact, do you stare into his or hers eyes and do they want you to say something or simply be there and shut up? But this time my head rested on top of hers without giving it a second thought, I said nothing but the occasional “I’ve got you.” It all came so naturally, the Travelers may be able to get rid of a person’s emotions, but here is proof that they can’t keep them from coming back.
I continued to hold her until the tears ran out and her dry sobs slowed to a gentle breath every now and then. But even so I didn’t let go, I still held on and I found that I had started to gently sway back and forth. As I noticed myself swaying her back and forth I also caught myself clutching her closer to me, and the way that she didn’t pull back, but above all I noticed the way my heart started to beat just a little faster and a little louder.
“Adele...” the moment was then shattered by the squeaky voice of Finn,
“Hey boss, I’ve been waiting in the conference room for like 20 hours, were you’ve been?” His voice made me shudder.
Finn is well; Finn is….Finn is special. The first time I saw him I was very intimidated, he has a large body, larger than anyone I have ever seen in the company, tattoos litter his arms and creep up his neck, and his hair was cut crew style. But the moment I heard him talk, it was hard to control my laughter. Finn’s body may be the very definition of intimidating but the moment he opens his mouth, it’s hard to take him seriously. He has a thick Boston accent, an accent that I thought had died out in 2099, but its very light and airy, almost whimsical.
I quickly dropped my arms and took a step back from her, and my mind quickly cleared from the emotional fog it was once doused with. “We’ll be there in just a moment Finn.” “But boss, it’s really important.” “I said we’ll be right there.” I may have had a moment of forgetfulness, while I was with Adele, but my business tone and attitude was back, and I made a mental note to yell at my lapse of mind later. But as I did this my heart screamed in protest, panting for a moment longer in her arms.
“I had better, umm you know… I should put some clothes on before I…” “Yes of course, umm take your time getting…ready, I’ll …I mean we’ll wait for you.” We did the awkward side step tango to get out of each other’s way until she went to the sleeping quarters and I headed to the conference room, it was very clear that I should be awarded with “suave man of the year”.
“I see that silver-tongue is still worken for ya boss.” I hadn’t noticed Finn’s tall frame still leaning against the wall, “I thought I told you we would be right there.” He just shrugged “yeah sure you did, but you never dismissed me.” He gave an elf like laugh while I just turned my back on him. Why couldn’t they fire him, he knew just how to piss everyone off.
I walked over to the conference room with great speed, but even with the extra giddy up in my stride Finn over took me with his large steps, cackling as he advanced ahead of me. “Geez boss, you need to work out more, you had a head start and I over took you in five steps.” I could feel the vein in my neck peak out and my knuckles crack as I squeezed them shut. “Watch yourself agent, I have the authority to send you back to 2000.” Again he just laughed at me, “like you would ever do that, you love me and you know it, besides I’m about to solve all your problems.”
I snorted at that, Finn was the cause of most of my problems, the kid just didn’t seem to grasp that there is a protocol and it must be followed. “Finn you didn’t have to call a big meeting to tell me that you finally read through all the protocols.” “That old manual, like I’ve got the time to read that. No I’ve got something that will blow your ass away.” I tried to keep from smiling; poor guy was trying to bring back trends from the 90’s and 2000’s. “Don’t you mean, blow your mind?” he turned his eyes upward and moved his finger back and forth, like he was turning pages in his mind. “naw I’m pretty sure its blow your ass away.” I just shook my head while I took my regular seat in the conference room. Finn sat across from me with the same silly look on his face trying to remember the proper saying. He may be a pain in my ass but he got me to laugh, something every guys needs in this line of work.
“Hey boss, I wanted to talk to ya before, Adele got back.” I nodded my head to let him continue, “For the past few weeks ive been hearing things, apparently there are going to be a lot of people taking some time off, and a bunch of fresh meat coming in… And boss our unit is going to be taking some time off.”













(End Chapter 1)