Temporal Psychosis

Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer

Kathleen Wright entered the Temporal Control Room after being notified of a Class I permutation to the Primary Timeline. “I got your message, Williams. What’s the problem?”

“Sorry to bother you on your day off, Ms Wright, but it appears that Charlie snapped. He was supposed to go back to November 1963 to replace the pristine ‘magic bullet’ from the Kennedy assignation with a severely damaged bullet. But he completely disregarded his mission objective, and did something that irrevocably altered the timeline.”

“Williams,” she corrected, “for us, nothing is irrevocable. We can send a security team to pre-date him. We’ll bring him back before he changes the timeline.”

“You don’t understand Ms Wright. He’s established at least a dozen time-anchors. He’s entrenched. We can’t bring him back.”

“Time-anchors? Field agents aren’t trained to do that. It requires a Senior Temporal Analyst.”

“Well, he figured out how to do it.” He swiveled in his chair to face her. “I think he’s got Temporal Psychosis. There is a definite pattern of impaired judgment, irrational behavior, paranoia, schizophrenia, and dementia.”

Wright sat down at a terminal and accessed Charlie’s Psych-Evaluation. “Hmm, eleven months ago his evaluation showed him to be marginal, but within the mean minus three sigma threshold. It was recommended that he have minimal exposure to chroniton radiation, but the union filed a grievance because that prevented him from working overtime. He was allowed to operate pending administrative review, which apparently never occurred. Oh well, I guess that’s sand through the hourglass. We’ll deal with mission protocols after we fix this permutation. Our immediate concern now is to minimize the damage he’s caused.”

Williams handed Wright a printout of the new timeline. “Look at the altfuture,” Ms Wright. “Charlie was at the center of major riots in the 1970’s that practically destroyed the United States. President Nixon declared Martial law. Millions of people were killed. The Soviet Union ends up the only super power for centuries. We don’t exist in the new timeline. My wife and kids are gone.”

“Don’t worry Williams. We can fix this. First of all, what are our options? Can we kill him in early 1964?”

“Only if it doesn’t cause a contradiction with the time-anchors. I’ll check. Damn, the anchors extend into the twenty first century. We need to neutralize him using non-fatal methods. I was thinking, Ms Wright, if he’s already psycho, maybe we can get him committed. They were doing that all the time back then. We only need him neutralized until the 1980’s.”

“No, Williams, it’s too easy to escape from mental hospitals, or to be released. We need him locked up in maximum security. And he needs to be discredited. Everybody must regard him as a total psychopath. Call in Harrison, White, and Starkey to devise an impact assessment. Also, have them recommend mitigation options. Tell them he’s got to be convicted of a horrific crime. Multiple murders, at least. They’ll need to establish a past. He must be an orphan, or have abusive parents. Don’t worry, Williams. This will be much easier to fix than when Adolf crossed over.”