A day in the life of a TTOR.

-"Don't forget the cake for tonight!", said Marsha, wife of Marcus Wisnewski, as he was to pass the door to go to work.
Today was the birthday of their daughter Allison, her sixth.
-"I won't, no need to worry, honey...", Marcus answered, looking at his girl laughing while watching her favorite cartoon on television.

He then kissed his wife and turned to go to his car, but not before he smiled and winked at her.

On his way to work, Marcus never listened to the news, aside from the sports news. He knew all else was a fabrication to occupy the minds of people all around, so there was no need to on his part.
But he was listening to Ella Fitzgerald sing when he got to work.

Officially, he was a simple government employee, doing the usual boring paper work the machine needs to function.
In reality, he was a TTOR, that is; Time Travel Official Representative.

When he entered his work station, he was still whistling that Fitzgerald song he was listening to. A few co-workers were already there, talking about last night's ball game.

-"Hey! Marcus! You watched the game yesterday?" It was Anton Miller, his best friend, asking.
-"Nope! I was responsible and spent the whole night revising today's mission. But I think the referee was totally sleeping with his call on Mygata's play!..." said Marcus, giving a wink to his friend.

Later that afternoon, Marcus was being prepared for his tt trip, his naked body being covered in a special gel that absorbed radiation from the trip. It disintegrated upon reentry in a time line. It also had the effect of stopping the aging of the body for the whole of the trip. It gave the opportunity of being able to send an agent through time for a mission that could last months, even years, to accomplish, and be returned to their original timeline a few minutes after their departure, without showing aging discrepancy to their entourage.

Time travel pioneers had it very very rough at the beginnings.

The biggest advantage given by time travel, and unknown to the public, was to the space exploration. Now, space agencies would simply send their equipment to any region of space through time, and have it back for analysis in a matter of minutes.
Rumors at the office was that a good fifty worlds were already in the process of being colonized, therefore, Earth's status as an important planet fell down the scale quite rapidly.

So, on that part, his line of work was ever more important to prevent the collapse of the whole system. Things could be retro corrected. But there were limits to possible retro corrections and guide lines were to be followed very precisely. That is why each missions were prepared for years before anything was done. A good agent would do at most a dozen missions in his life time.

This was Marcus' fifth. His boss, Belinda Cromwell, was going through details as he was finishing his preparations before his departure. It was boring at that stage of the planning, but essential as to not overlook any details.

His mission would last 6 months, he would need to infiltrate a university and change the mind frame of a young student so that his political views would be different in his future. That was essential as it would lead that young student to take a different political approach that would prevent a disastrous accident to happen.

Interactions with a timeline was precisely scripted to the minute. There was no need to create a butterfly effect through time that was not desired.

Everything was set, and Marcus was ready to be sent on his mission. Before departure, he winked and smiled at his team, then was gone without a sound or even a sparkle of light. Movies depicting real time travels would be so boring, in the FX department...

For the next five minutes, the team would monitor everything there was to monitor until preparing for their agent's reentry into their time line, under the supervision of their boss. It was an intense 5 minutes of work where no mistakes were to be made. Only the top of their classes could do such a job.

Linda Mathers, the boss, started to follow the countdown aloud, with less then five seconds to go before reentry.
Then, Marcia Gates was simply there. Still with no sounds or fireworks to show her arrival.

Ariel Miller, her best friend, came to greet her with a blanket to warm her as the tt trips were cold. Linda gave the usual congratulations on a yet again perfectly done mission. Marcia's report would be made in the following hour, the time needed for her to clean herself and get dressed.

In any ways, she didn't want to be late from work. Someone special was waiting at home for a special birthday.

-"Are you coming to the reception tonight?", asked Ariel to Marcia, almost done with buttoning her blouse.
-"No, I can't! You know how I hate politicians! Anyway, I have to go to the store to buy some meat and bones for Traveler! It's been ten years today since I adopted that dog.", answered Marcia to Ariel.
-"You should have wed at some point in time, you know.", teased Ariel.
Marcia replied that a dog was way much more manageable. As she was to pass the door to go home, she turned around and said; -"Thanks for the invite! I'll see you tomorrow, though!", winking and smiling to her friend.

The infinity.

I enjoyed the story, and maybe I'm missing something, but who the hell is Marcia Gates and where is Marcus?

reply to post by rydizz


That is the mystery of time travels, good protocols or not! So Marcia is the agent that came back from what Marcus did on his mission. You could say the mission changed him.

Glad you liked!

EDIT: LOL Forgot to put "And so ended a day in the life of a TTOR." as the last sentence... Well, now you got it there...