Time Agent | ONC2024

3. Preparation

This chapter is dedicated to annkreeves and her badboy story for the ONC, The Escaped Con's Hostage!

Seven left the briefing, feeling rather as if he had been knocked over by a runaway shuttle.

Less than twenty-four hours to prepare! And he was going alone. No one to share the responsibility and help decide on the best action to take. A turbulent mixture of excitement and fear churned around in his stomach. Thrilled as he was to be chosen, he would have appreciated more time for research. Not only did he need to learn the local language but he needed to familiarise himself with the recent history, customs, and most importantly, any significant taboos, of the people he would have to interact with, so that he could blend in.

He paused for a moment when he left the building, checking the surroundings as usual before he descended. A huge dome covered the entire complex, concealing the compound from outside observation and making it accessible only through monitored points of entry. Opaque to outsiders, it was transparent from the inside. When he looked up, Seven could see the sky. He had yet to see an intruder on the grounds but scanning the environment was part of his training.

The agents' living quarters were to his right, the support staff quarters next to them and the storage facilities and workshops to his left. Green grass covered the ground between, interwoven with paths of gravel or white plascrete. No trees or flowers to vary the landscape or provide cover for anything larger than a beetle.

He set off at a brisk pace, struggling to get his thoughts in order and itemise the list of tasks he needed to work through before he went to the lab tomorrow.

Built of the ubiquitous white plascrete, the agents' quarters rose three stories into the sky, with a fourth floor below ground. Currently, there were fourteen agents living there, though as the Director had said, most were absent on active duty.

Each occupant had a vertical slice of the building, and Seven had configured his personal section so that his study was in the basement, allowing him to be free from distractions. His entertaining room, complete with food and beverage dispenser was on the ground floor, where the entrance was, and his sleeping room and hygiene unit were above. The top floor of the building was allocated to communal activities, a refectory, and various meeting rooms.

Seven got himself an energiser drink from the dispenser, carried it down to his study and activated his console unit. Three folders appeared, under the mission heading, Trafalgar TL; Language, History, and Priority.

Opening the language folder first, Seven was relieved to discover the primary language in use was English, a tongue he had already mastered. Even if they had evolved their own dialect, he had a good starting point. The secondary language, on the other hand, was one he had never heard of, Norman. Curiously, it proved to be a version of French, a language which was purely academic in his own time.

He connected the console unit to his temples and closed his eyes. An hour later, not only had both language files been transmitted to his brain but his mind had begun to absorb some of the key details.

He took a short break and spent five minutes stretching before sitting back down and opening the folder labelled History.

The first few files were summaries of events from their shared timeline, before the pivot point, where the smaller branch went off on its own trajectory.

The 18th Century had been a turbulent time in Old Europe by all accounts. Frequent uprisings and numerous battles between warring states, not to mention a major revolution in France. The conflict he was particularly interested in, the so-called Napoleonic Wars, had begun, according to his sources, on the 18th of May 1803, with the British invasion of France. All very interesting to those involved, no doubt, but he skipped ahead to events nearer the diversion date.

In the primary time line, the British had defeated the French at the naval Battle of Trafalgar, in October 1805. Contemporary accounts put the victory down to the skill and tactics of Admiral Horatio Nelson, an opinion which was held for many years afterwards. To Seven's surprise, Nelson had been shot and killed during the battle, but after victory had been achieved. Could one man have been so significant to the time line? Was it possible that in the subsidiary time line he had been shot earlier in the battle, before the victory? Could that have made such a difference?

He scrolled down to the far smaller amount of information about the divergent timeline, which had been prepared for him by one of the Senta's Librarians.

Full of anticipation, and still riding high from being accepted into the program, Seven had attended the induction briefing along with twenty other young people.

He still remembered the speech given by the Director.

"Librarians are critical to the functioning of this Senta and the entire Temporal Management Research project. As a Librarian, you will be responsible for compiling relevant information about divergent time lines. Depending on the significance of the new time line, you will be allocated a number of visits through the Time Gate to gather information and you'll be equipped with the latest synthcorder to log your findings. As you would expect with varying technologies, information can come in a wide variety of forms. Anything from hard copies in all their various manifestations, to oral stories, and pictures of what you can see with your own eyes. Anything in fact, that we might need to know for the future."

The young man he had been seated next to, looked dazzled by the prospect.

"That's the one for me!" he told Seven, his eyes shining. "Imagine, all those societies to study."

For a moment Seven had been tempted, not least because his companion was the cutest man he had seen for months, but he feared the role would be too passive. At twenty-two, he wanted action.

He wanted to get out there and make a difference, to protect his world, and all the people in it.
Agents were active.