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Introduction:

I've been messing with my characters in "I Want to be Your Slave." "Back in Time." "The Other Stephen's Story." There had to be a reason for all the weird happenings. This also touches on other writings involving the Tony Burris Character. There's a list of stories this touches on at the end, which may or may not have been published.

WTF

I say again, "what the fuck?"

Yeah, that's the right start to this. I'm feeling the need to write this down. WTF indeed.

Start at the beginning. I woke up in 1806, WTF. Yeah, that's not what you're expecting when you went to bed in 2006. So WTF.

Theories:

1. I'm dreaming, I'm still in 2006
2. I'm not dreaming, 2006 was the dream.
3. I'm in 1806. Yeah, right that's silly, you must be dreaming.

OK, #2 doesn't seem reasonable, I remember everything from 1973-2006 pretty much, maybe 1972, I was only four then. I don't remember 1773-1806. OK, make #2, "I was dreaming, but I have amnesia." Still seems silly, too complicated. Apply Occam's razor.

#1 will sort itself out in time. But I'm talking to myself, so this is a lucid dream. What do you do in lucid dreams? Well, me, I try altering reality, it's worked before. If reality bends to my will, this is a dream, have fun. Dawn! I could make Dawn live again if this were a dream, but I can't make her appear. So I can't prove this is a lucid dream. The problem is, you can never prove it isn't a dream. Yeah, I tried that one once, I came to the wrong conclusion, I really was dreaming. Only when I woke up later I knew I was wrong. Of course, I could have been wrong about that. So no proving this is not a dream. Keep hypothesis #1 as the prime hypothesis.

#3. Silly. When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth. I haven't eliminated #1 yet, so I won't go for #3 just yet.

So if #3 is right (it isn't), what does that tell me. Something transferred between 2006 and 1806, how would that happen. What transferred? My consciousness transferred. Did it bring the body with it, am I me, or am I just my consciousness. I have a body, is it mine? It looks like me. Moving matter through time sounds more difficult than just information, but who knows. I wish I'd listened more closely to that guy who was going on about closed time-like lines back in college. Who was that anyway? Must have been a guy at the Maths Institute. I don't remember him, just what he was saying.

I have a body but everyone else here seems to think I belong. I'm the only person with a differing opinion on that.

—

"We have eyes on the Journal!" A big cheer went up around the control room as the words floated across the big screen.

Probably most relieved by this development was Lou. Lou Latour, Director of the Temporal Investigations Institute, this mess was all his problem. Lou, even if he had the body of a thirty year old model thanks to modern medicine, was feeling all of the weight of his sixty years. This lifted his spirits considerably, it was the first good news since the anomaly.

"Anomaly." That was one way of putting it mused Lou, "Time Fuck" was the popular phrase around the Institute. Lou thought back to the anomaly. It was supposed to be a routine research project, he had hardly taken any notice of the operation, he'd left the details to Melissa the project manager. He'd happened to be in the control room as the operation proceeded. He had no particular reason to, just keeping a finger on the pulse. The operation was unremarkable, studying a slave owner from 353 years ago. Someone's Ph.D thesis he'd assumed.

The data had been gathered and the operation shutting down when the anomaly hit. It was something he had never wanted to see, the containment bubble glowed purple. Sirens blared, doors slammed shut, startled operations staff looked around, then furiously worked at their terminals.

Lou knew the purple glow was bad. He'd never seen it, but it was a theoretical possibility, the containment bubble was there to prevent an altered reality from leaking into the real world. The glow was the altered reality leaking through the containment.

When temporal transference was first experimented with, there was a public outcry. Even if the transference was only gathering information from the past, the transference could, in theory, happen in reverse. Information could leak into the past, the fear was that it might alter the past, and thus the present. The containment bubble was mandated to prevent any such alteration affecting the present. The bubble could hold back reality long enough for them to work out what the problem was and fix it, using that reverse transfer to inject an information antidote into the past to counter the pollution.

The containment bubble wasn't enough for the oversight committee, so the secondary containment was added. The secondary containment surrounded the entire TII facility. If reality ever got that far, there were protocols on the outside to isolate the facility to prevent the pollution reaching any further. It was not a comforting thought that those protocols would now be in operation.

"Melissa, I want a sit-rep soonest." Lou barked at the very worried looking Melissa as he left the control room. He didn't wait for an acknowledgement. He trusted Melissa, she'd worked for him for ten years and never made any questionable decisions. If things were bad, Melissa would straighten them out. In previous times, an observer might have been startled that Melissa had the body of an eighteen year old super-model. It was the fashion for women at that time, medical science again. Lou didn't notice, all the women he knew had a body like that, it wasn't remarkable.

Down the corridor to his office. He had the facilities needed to communicate with the world outside. He reached his office and stared in open mouthed amazement at the view from his window. The sky was glowing purple. He had the presence of mind to realize this was the secondary containment bubble keeping reality at bay. Only the bubble was keeping the reality of the world outside from leaking into the facility, not the other way around as he'd expected.

That, he'd never seen before, he'd never heard of that before. He tweeted, "All personnel, all hands, ten minutes, auditorium, threat level violet." That should get people's attention, threat level violet was reserved for the imminent destruction of the facility.

Lou tried the Bell-channel to the outside world, no one answered. The Bell-channel made use of what had once been described as "spooky action at a distance." It could communicate instantly over over almost any distance. It could also communicate across realities. There was no answer, that was disturbing.

Lou made his way to the auditorium, the masses were assembling. The choir of angels was how Lou thought of it, row upon row of perfect people. The fashion was for perfect. That wasn't his concern right now, but he noticed one person at the back. He didn't know her, but she looked older, not perfect. That would have been enough to get his attention under normal circumstances, but this was anything but normal.

He filed that anomaly away and addressed the crowd. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm sure by now you are aware there has been an anomaly. The anomaly looks to be of a greater magnitude than we have ever experienced. Also the anomaly seems to have affected the world at large. In case you haven't noticed the reality from outside is trying to leak into the facility. This is unprecedented. I have been unable to contact anyone on the outside. This is also unprecedented. I feel justified in using threat level violet to describe this situation. It would seem that reality is trying to leak into the facility on two sides, from inside and from outside. I can only assume this will lead to the destruction of the facility if we do not repair the timeline."

Lou was relieved to see that Melissa was sitting in the front row. "Melissa was the project manager, do you have a report?"

Melissa got up and took Lou's place at the lectern. "At 15:37 this afternoon, I was running project MH-1806-J16. The project was successful and the Bell-bridge was being shutdown when the anomaly happened." That gave most people some context, 'H' was a history investigation, J would have been judicial. 1806 was the target year. The rest just a serial number. "We are seeing a strong reality leak into the containment bubble. It is not yet clear what the reality is that is leaking, we are currently labeling the contained reality's timeline as t-minus."

That also made sense, the "real" reality was conventionally labeled timeline t-zero (pronounced 'tee-zero' and written as a t with a superscript zero. t-minus, was written with a superscript minus sign). t-zero was always what they strived to reestablish if they made any changes. Temporal investigators could get mightily confused if they weren't careful, they needed to very precise when referring to any event or object. It should always be labeled with its timeline.

"The t-minus leak is a very strong one, the containment bubble is not creating total containment, as evidenced by the Cherenkov glow." The purple glow was referred to as 'Cherenkov', just like radioactivity glowing, even though it really was a totally different mechanism. "We have not been able to contact any of the equipment inside the bubble. We are running diagnostics, but the prime theory is that the equipment no longer exists in t-minus."

Melissa paused to let that sink in. If the equipment was not in t-minus, it was probably because the institute did not exist in t-minus. "We are currently assuming the anomaly has caused the institute to to be a null event in t-minus. This may explain the strength of the anomaly. This is all I have to report." Melissa sat back down in her chair.

Lou assumed the lectern agin. "Thank you Melissa. I hope all of you here grasp the gravity of this situation. If you have any active investigations, they should be shut down as quickly as possible. Who is that?"

There was a chorus of "Me." "Me." "Me.". Reg, Lindsey and Declan all had active experiments.

"Melissa, you can call on any resources you need. People, that means you, if Melissa asks you to jump, ask her 'how high?'" A chuckle went around the room, a little levity couldn't hurt. Lou surveyed the room he saw Adrien, Sheri and Jamie as available to help with their teams. "I also need an investigation on what's going on outside." Sheri was also one of his most trusted PMs, she hadn't been around as long as Melissa but pretty damn close. "Sheri," She jumped to attention, "head up the investigation."

"Yes, Lou."

"Again, Sheri take whatever resources you need, if Melissa doesn't need them. Co-ordinate with Melissa. Any questions, important questions that is, you all now know as much as anyone." He looked around the room, no one wanted to be that person. "I want reports every three hours if there's no news. If there's news I want it instantly. Now get to work."

Lou went back to his office to await developments. He tried not to feel to spare, he was confident in his team and didn't want to get the way of the investigations. The first development was from Sheri. She said she could see Bell-net traffic outside but the institute's credentials were not allowing them to connect. She asked if she could use the SBMF credentials, the SBMF was the foundation that had set up the institute, Lou had access to some of their accounts if necessary. This did seem necessary and he allowed their use.

Next was Melissa, she was planning on using one of the other Bell-bridges (in one of the other containment bubbles) to probe the mysterious t-minus timeline in the glowing containment bubble. Lou thought this was a good idea.

—

At 8am the next morning, Lou called another all-hands. He thought he should make this a regular thing as long as the emergency existed. "Thank you all for coming. We will be having eight AM meetings until further notice. First we have updates. Melissa."

Melissa took the lectern. "We have been using bridge 2 to probe the reality in bridge 3, the site of the anomaly. We have confirmed that the institute does not exist in t-minus. We are probing the differences between t-zero and t-minus. Lindsey is using Bridge 1 to probe t-zero supplemental to the shielded thumbs." The thumbs referred to were data bases of the world as it existed before the experiment. These provided a baseline for returning a timeline to it initial state, they also had personal records and personal histories of the staff. They were independently reality shielded so would remain true even if the containment bubbles failed.

"We have currently traced the timeline delta to the TLL." Delta was their jargon for the difference between any two timelines. The TLL was the 'Time Locked Loop', the fundamental component of all the temporal transference technology. "The TLL was first proposed in 2037 by Dr Naomi Robertson in the paper 'A Time Locked Loop.' We have traced all the citations in that paper in t-minus except for one. That paper is 'Closed time-like curves, without an event horizon.' by Dr Aimee Burris in 2016. We're calling this the 'CTC' paper. The CTC paper seems to be a crucial delta between t-zero and t-minus."

"In t-zero Dr Burris was in the class of 1989 at Stanford. She completed her Ph.D in cosmology in 1992 and was not published again until the CTC paper. In t-minus Aimee Richardson dropped out of Stanford after her Sophomore year, and died in a car accident two years later. We will refer to Dr Burris/Aimee Richardson as Aimee. We're currently probing the delta which caused Aimee to drop out. This is all I have to report." If timeline deltas caused a subject they were interested in to have a different name, they always chose one name to refer to that subject across any timelines, in this case, 'Aimee'.

Lou took the lectern again. None of this was new to him, but everyone needed to be on the same page. "Thank you Melissa. Now Sheri."

Sheri gave her report, "We have connected to the internet on the outside. The institute does not exist there either. We are not seeing any obvious deltas. The entire theory of temporal transference does not exist. We are working on a theory of a Novikov wave. Novikov's self-consistency principle states that it impossible to create a paradox in a self constant universe. We have just created a temporal paradox, so we can not logically exist. On the outside, we don't exist and never could. Luckily for us, the Novikov wave is held back by the secondary containment bubble. The purple glow you see in the sky is the Novikov wave, if it breaks through the containment, we will no longer exist, and never will have. We are referring to the reality of the Novikov wave as timeline t-null."

Lou took the lectern again. "Thank you Sheri. People, you all understand how serious this is. For now, Sheri continue the investigation, but maximum effort will be put into the t-minus investigation. Melissa and your team are still leads. The other four teams will support as necessary. Once we understand the t-minus deltas, we will start to construct a t-plus timeline congruent with t-zero which puts us back in existence. Thank you everyone." Translated, what Lou had just said was they were going to apply bandaids to the injured timeline until it was close enough to the reality they wanted. At the very least the institute needed to exist. As usual the repaired new timeline was called t-plus (pronounced, 'tee-plus').

With that Lou again went to his office to await developments.

—

8am again, Friday now. Lou opened again, "Thank you all for coming. We'll start with Melissa's update."

"We have traced the CE which caused Aimee to drop out of Stanford." CE was their jargon for 'causal event', an event which created a delta. "In t-zero she met her future husband, Tony Burris at the beginning of her Sophomore year. In t-minus Tony Burris studied at Berkeley instead. In a separate investigation, Jamie is going head the team to use bridge 4 to probe t-minus for the subject of MH-1806-J16, we think he may be one of the deltas or may shed some light on the the ultimate CE. This is all I have to report."

Lou went back to his office as usual after the meeting, intending to go watch Jamie's operation later. The probe plan was to get eyes on the subject. "Eyes on" was jargon for tapping into the subject's optic nerve, essentially being able to see what the subject could see. The probe could also send something in the other direction. Simple desires and feelings could be impressed on the subject in the hopes of changing their actions slightly. This is how CEs could be introduced into a time line. A common probe was to induce desire to write in the subject, in the hopes they'd write something of their situation or feelings, the institute could snoop on the writing, which could help in repairing a timeline.

Lou was sitting in the back of the control room for bridge 4 as Jamie was running the probe. "We have eyes on the Journal!" A big cheer went up around the room as the words floated across the big screen.

Even Lou could see that the 2006 subject was interesting here. He tweeted to Adrien. "Take bridge 5 and probe the 2006 subject."

Late in the afternoon, Melissa and her team were closing in the CE which caused the Tony Burris delta. Time for a break, "Well done team, take five." She was feeling horny. She hadn't had sex yet that day, she'd been too busy. With the body of an eighteen year old, she had the hormones of an eighteen year old. In fact the fashion these days was for an even higher sex drive. They'd also been snooping on the 18 year old Tony and his liaison with the older Diane. The scenes had been pushing her buttons.

She looked around and Paul was walking by. Paul was the newest recruit to her team, she hadn't got to know him yet. "Hey Paul, wanna fuck?" That was nothing out of the ordinary in those days, people had pure sex, much like they might have gone for a smoke or a cup of coffee in earlier times.

Paul was excited by the idea, he liked older women, the "old broads" made more interesting lovers than the girls his age. You'd be hard pushed to actually see any physical difference between an old broad and a young girl, but their experience set them apart when he'd been able to get one. He'd not broached the idea with Melissa, he was intimidated by her, her being his boss and all. In his head he called them "old broads", he'd been exposed to the archaic language by the job here. He liked the term, but would never have dreamt of using that to her face. He tried to stay cool and not betray his excitement, "Sure".

Melissa and Paul left the control room, chatting as colleagues. They looked in one of the adjacent rec rooms, it was full, all three beds were occupied with fucking coworkers. They looked next door, it was empty, not so popular as it only had the one bed. They entered and started taking off their clothes, still chatting. They weren't wearing very much, just a short skirt and crop top for Melissa, shorts and tee shirt for Paul.

Melissa lay down on the bed and readied herself. She liked the young ones, the fashion was penises got bigger as they got younger. She wasn't disappointed, she estimated a good quarter metre, and as thick as her fist. She concentrated on her meditation to allow her older body to take his penis, she was already wet but concentrated on relaxing and lubricating.

Paul got between her legs and thrust into her, girls these days neither needed nor expected any preliminaries, just pure sex. 'Wow!' He thought to himself, he could really tell she was an older broad. She was tight, much tighter than girls his age. He thrust and Melissa was already having her first orgasm. Quick, he thought, better than the young girls. She orgasmed again and he was worried he'd be joining her too quickly, she was turning him on so much. In the end she only came five times before he couldn't hold it any more and spurted up her.

Melissa was pleased, she'd made him come so quickly, and it felt like a litre of cum in her pussy. She also needed to get back to work, so quick wasn't a bad thing. They lay together on the bed enjoying their post coital bliss. She picked up her phone and composed a (holographic) selfie of the two of them. She posted it to her status page, "Well fucked by Paul." Along with a link to the holo of their entire coupling. She bumped her phone to him and the same update was posted to his page. "We'd best get back to work."

Paul got up as Melissa snuck in a close up of her vagina and tweeted it to her husband, Curt. He wasn't going to get it until they'd sorted out the current situation, but he'd appreciate the pictures when he got them. Usually, he'd be going to lick up the mess, Melissa felt so deliciously naughty with that thought. Then she wondered about putting her panties back on. Usually Curt liked her to, to keep the mess contained. The fashion with young girls was to leave off the panties and allow a tail of cum down the thigh. She put the panties on, she wasn't fond of that silly girl's fashion, even if there was not going to be a husband this evening to appreciate it.

—

Saturday now, 8am again. "Thank you all for coming. We had significant progress yesterday. We have a theory on the source of the anomaly. Adrien."

Adrien took the podium. "Jamie's probe yesterday revealed that the subject of MH-1806-J16 has a consciousness from 2006. We have tracked the body which belongs to that consciousness in 2006. We found the 1806 consciousness there. Both of these subjects share the name Stephen Somers. We will refer to them as Stephen18 as the consciousness which belongs in 1806, and Stephen20 as the one from 2006."

"We are now working on the theory that we tripped over harmonic interference. The 1806 and 2006 loci form a 17:13 harmonic with the date of the anomaly." Harmonic interference was something which they tried hard to avoid. The temporal transfer made a path through space-time (or 4-space as they called it) from the present point in 4-space to the subject point in 4-space being observed. If something, like the Earth, crossed that path then the probe might accidentally pick up an unrelated subject, if that unrelated subject was compatible. In this case, the 2006 Earth crossed the path while they were looking at 1806. Locus and its plural loci were more jargon for place and time.

"Stephen18 and Stephen20 are unusually compatible, they have very similar eigenvalues and eigenvectors to within one percent." More jargon, eigenvalues and eigenvectors measured the effect people had on the world. They were important when probing a subject. "It looks that as we were withdrawing the probe from Stephen18, Stephen20 intersected the probe. This caused an exchange of consciousness between the two bodies. We're still working on the model of how that would happen. If we wanted to attempt to reverse the process, the 18:13 harmonic will occur in eight days time. This would be in 1814 and 2014 for the two Stephens. We think that that will be an opportunity. We're working on the model for this currently." The translation of that was they had eight days to sort out the mess.

Lou took the lectern, "Thank you Adrien, now Melissa."

"We think we have found the CE which caused Tony Burris' change in locus. We will attempt to inject an inverse CE to change his locus back to Stanford. We hope this will recreate the CTC paper. This is all I have to report."

Lou spoke again. "Thank you Melissa, thank you to everyone for all your hard work. There is good reason to hope we can recreate t-zero today." In all previous anomalies Lou had been involved in, one inverse CE injected had repaired things sufficiently so they could all go home.

Today, Lou went to bridge 3 to watch the inverse CE. He sat quietly at the back and let Melissa do her job. The first order of business was to get eyes on the situation in t-minus and observe. In this case the subject was Jasmine Humphries, girlfriend of Tony Burris. "We have eyes on the subject!" On the big screen was an image of a door, a hand reached to open the door. Behind the door is a big guy, he looked like an archetypal twentieth century surfer, shaggy blond hair to his shoulders.

A girls voice was heard, "Hey Tony." They'd also got the acoustic nerve for this one.

"Hey" was his response, and he stepped across the threshold.

The subject obviously kissed the guy on the cheek, "Happy Birthday." There was some discomfort around the control room at such an open display of affection. The team were professionals and were used to this while probing subjects, so they tried not to let it affect them.

The guy stood back slightly and waved something, "Thanks, I scored a Tower card."

"Cool."

"We should get to Tower, it's on the way to Bob’s." This was sounding like some soppy teen romance, Lou wasn't quite sure what the point was. The guy got close and his shoulder obscured the point of view. "But first, I’m eighteen now."

"Yeah, congratulations."

"I’m like, legal now."

"Oh, yeah." There was silence, you could almost hear the gears whirring in the girls head. "OK." Was all she said, they held hands and she led him up the stairs.

The big screen went blank.

Melissa spoke to the room. "You have just watched Jasmine Humphries accept Tony Burris' advances on his eighteenth birthday, in t-zero we see that she rejected his advances at this point. That seems to be the CE. Jane, are you ready to inject the inverse CE?"

"I am." A different member of the team spoke up from across the room, just as supermodel like as Melissa, but again, Lou did't notice that.

"Hit it." Melissa ordered the room and there was furious activity.

Again, "We have eyes on the subject." The same scene played out on the big screen. It got to:

"But first, I’m eighteen now."

"Yeah, congratulations."

"I’m like, legal now."

"Oh, yeah." Again there was silence, but this time, "But … I can’t sin against my body." There was a momentary cheer in the room, the injection had worked.

The guy was agitated, he shouted, "I thought we'd settled this!, I’ve been waiting for months, like since your birthday, you’ve just been stringing me along!"

The guy receded, the subject's gaze was on the floor. "I’m so sorry Tony."

The guy really didn't react well, "Fuck Paul! Fuck the Corinthians!" He went out of the door and slammed it behind him. Again the big screen went black.

Melissa again addressed the room. "Well done team. Now set up to observe the effect on t-plus." Lou slipped out of the room to leave them to it, he made his way to the cafe. The cafe was normally in limited operation, but swung into high gear at times like these. It was now the sole source of food for all of the institute's personnel.

Lou got a snack and was looking for a place to sit when he saw the older girl who'd been in the auditorium, she was sitting alone. The cafe was pretty empty, most people were working furiously on the various investigations. The girl was distracted by her phone, so when Lou said, "Mind if I join you?" She was startled.

She quickly recovered her composure, "Director Latour, I'd be delighted."

"Please call me Lou." Addressing someone so formally was unusual these days.

"And I'm Jody."

"Pleased to meet you Jody, you're not one of my staff are you?" Lou hoped he hadn't forgotten one of his personnel. A good leader knows his team.

"No, I'm a graduate student, MH-1806-J16 was my investigation. This was my first investigation, is it always this exciting at the institute?"

"Oh, no, it's usually much more boring than this. Anomalies are, thankfully, very rare. There's never been one of this magnitude before."

"I'm not sure if that makes me lucky or unlucky to see such a rare event."

"I'd go with unlucky, you're not going to see the half of it either, once we get this mess sorted out, you'll be off. I'll still be filling out forms and testifying before congress."

"Congress?" Jody was surprised at that.

"Yeah, the Temporal Oversight Committee. A former director said of them, 'We tick, they TOC, and time passes.'" Jody laughed at that. Lou smiled. He just realised he'd just had a few moments not worrying about the current situation, it'd been on his mind constantly for the last three days. Talking to Jody had just been so natural. It reminded of how it'd been at the start with at least two of his wives.

With that, he also realised he hadn't had sex yet today. "Hey Jody, wanna fuck." Just a casual enquiry.

Jody changed, like she was reciting something rote. "Thank you for you kind offer, but I'll have to say no." Well, that didn't often happen, particularly to Lou, being director. But no meant no, so he turned off that thought and turned back to the conversation when she carried on. "The tenets of my religion would not allow me to accept your offer at this time."

That was a new one on Lou. "Your religion?"

"Yes, I'm a witnessman." That explained somethings, Lou knew the witnessmen had some hangups about modern medicine, but that's about all he knew. She continued, "We believe that sex should only be practiced in the context of a committed loving relationship."

"So you only have sex when married?"

"No, that would be impractical for a son of tec, the current guidance is you'd have to be exclusive and celibate for three days."

"If I didn't have sex with anyone for three days, I could have sex with you?" Lou thought that was the way she meant it, she did have a strange way of putting it. She couldn't have had much sex then, he tried to contemplate three days without, his imagination was failing him. It was bad enough he hadn't had sex yet today.

"Well, my religion would then allow me to engage in intimacy leading to sexual consummation." That shocked Lou, suggesting intimacy before sex. Intimacy was only proper inside of marriage. "It would of course be my choice whether to accept of not, but in your case I'd be inclined accept. Besides, no son of tech has ever managed to go the three days for me."

"You've never had sex?" That thought was so far out that Lou thought he must have misunderstood her.

"That is correct, I am a virgin." Lou was aware of that archaic word, being in the history business you got exposed to a lot of outdated concepts. It just wasn't one which was needed these days, she might as well have been riding a unicorn, as was her right as a virgin, it wouldn't have made her any rarer.

Lou considered what she said again, could he even go without sex for three days, even if the reward was to ride a unicorn. He started to wonder if he should try, he was never one to shrink from a challenge. Still considering that conundrum, there was still something that was nagging at him. "You seem to be calling me a 'son of tec', what's that about?"

Again, she seemed to be reciting something, "The Church of the Witness of the Sons of Man, to give the witnesmen their correct name, divide the world into the sons of man, and the sons of tec. The sons of man are natural born, with all the gifts God gave them, the sons of tec have been enhanced by technology. I am a son of man, you a son of tec. We strive to become closer to God. In that, a son of tec starts with a disadvantage, but you could be redeemed."

The proselytizing also seemed archaic to Lou, he wasn't sure about that. "When you say redeemed?"

"If you gave up further enhancement, you would slowly revert to being a son of man, you would grow old and die as God intended." As a sales pitch Lou though that left a lot to be desired. "Those who die as a son of man will be received into heaven to sit at God's right hand." So that was the payoff, really archaic.

At that point Lou's phone interrupted him. "I've got to go, it was nice talking to you Jody. I'll think about your offer." Lou found the whole situation intriguing. Jody didn't hold out much hope, she was constantly asked for sex, so was any other girl, but some of the boys did find her interesting, being so different. Some had even tried to qualify, but none had made it the three days. The director would make a good catch, such a powerful man, but powerful men were seldom without temptation.

—

Sunday 8am. Melissa reported. "We have managed to partially repair t-zero. Aimee now meets Tony at Stanford and Aimee now completes her Ph.D. in 1992. The CTC paper is still missing. We're probing the differences between t-plus, t-minus and t-zero to find a CE. This is all I have to report." This was shaping up bad thought Lou, their inverse CE had done what they expected, but it hadn't resolved the situation as a whole. This was new ground for everyone.

Later, in the Cafe Lou sought out Jody. He sat with her again, to Jody he seemed quite agitated, she hoped this was a good sign. "I've been thinking about you're offer, and I did't have sex at all yesterday. Let see," He looked at his status page on his phone, "I fucked Stacy at 16:07 on Friday, that was the last time, that was about 44 hours ago. Does it have to be three days? I'm going out of my mind here." Lou was questioning his judgement in accepting this challenge, but he couldn't let himself back down now. He never backed down. Logic wasn't Lou's strong point at that moment, his body really wasn't built to not have sex this long.

"I'm afraid it does Lou, I could make an appointment for 16:07 tomorrow if you like."

"You do that, I'll be in my room." With that rather brusque statement, Lou retreated to his room in accommodation wing to practice his meditation and hoped to survive the next 28 hours. The accommodation wing was necessary when you could be cut off from the outside world at any time. They had small but comfortable rooms they could call their own. Usually they were alone in them, sex was conventionally confined to the public rec rooms.

—

Monday 8am. Melissa: "Lou has asked me to take this meeting, he is otherwise engaged. We think we have found the CE for the CTC paper. In t-zero locus 2015, Aimee is at a party hosted by her friend Dr Maria Freeman. Also at the party is Stephen20 and his wife Dawn. Stephen20 asks Aimee casually how it would be possible to transfer information across time. Aimee answers with some theory about closed time-like curves. We see that Aimee had been working on the CTC paper, and this prompts her to publish it. In t-plus, the paper remains unpublished."

"We now see a large delta between t-zero and t-minus/t-plus. Stephen20 looks to be the pivotal figure in this. In both t-minus and t-plus his locus is Southern California, not San Francisco. We think this maybe significant as both Dr Freeman and Aimee's locus is San Francisco. In t-minus and t-plus he is married to different women, though they are all named Dawn. We will refer to these as Dawn-zero, Dawn-minus and Dawn-plus depending on their timeline. Stepehen20's timeline seems to have a fragile line of causation, as evidenced by its mutability. This is all I have to report."

That much was obvious to most of the audience, Stephen20's circumstances were changing depending on unrelated changes they were making to the timeline. He wasn't strongly anchored to any circumstance. That could make things unpredictable and difficult to repair.

At 16:06 Jody reached Lou's room. The room recognized his visitor and let her in. Lou was lying on his bed under the covers. He might have been asleep, but Jody assumed he was meditating. She sat on the bed and kissed him on the forehead. His eyes flipped open, she wasn't sure if he saw her. "Thank you Lou, I appreciate your sacrifice and I've come to give you your reward." There was little reaction from Lou.

Jody pulled the covers off him, he was naked and had an erection. She may never have done anything like this for real before, but interacting sons of tec was an important part of being a witnessman, she had been taught about this, at least in theory. She looked at the erection, she was glad Lou was so old, the fashion to larger penises could make this job very difficult. As it was his was less than one-fifth or a metre, she thought she could handle that. She took the erection into her mouth, almost immediately there was a torrent of cum filling her mouth, overflowing her mouth.

She swallowed what she could and kissed Lou, big sloppy wet kisses. Lou had been roused from his mediation by what felt like an explosion in his loins, a very welcome ecstatic explosion. His mind had cleared with the explosion, but before he could process that the kisses started. He hadn't kissed a woman since his third wife five years ago. He liked it, he kind of missed kissing. He heard, "You are eager, aren't you." She was referring to his erection, he wasn't surprised, he was hard again, he had three days of sex to catch up on.

"Before you start, you should know I'm not like the girls you're used to." Lou hardly thought that was much of a revelation. "I work differently from them, you're going to have to work with me on this. I need foreplay to be able to function." Foreplay was another archaic word, Lou understood it, at least in theory, so made to kiss Jody. "You've done this before?" She was surprised, she was expecting to have to guide him through this.

"I've been married three times. I've been intimate, I think I can manage this." Then he kissed her. Lou thought, yup, I've missed this. Jody thought 'Oh wow, this is good'. Along with the kisses, Lou started to caress Jody. She was still dressed, rater conservatively actually, and his hand snaked their way beneath her clothes. Jody thrilled to his touch, this was better than she had ever imagined. Lou knew that sex with Jody was going to be strange, and her being clothed was just one aspect of that. Her clothes started falling away, to Jody that seemed like magic. Then she was naked. More to the point she was naked with a naked man who had an enormous erection.

Lou's clever hands caressed all over Jody's naked body. Lou marveled at the imperfections of it. It was like no body he'd ever seen before. Or touched before, it was definitely not like any of his wives. He felt between her legs she was making a good start on being lubricated, but for a virgin, he didn't think she could be ready enough. He moved down and licked her, she reacted well and moaned softly. If she could think, Jody might be thinking, 'why did I wait 27 years to do this', but her state of mind was more like, 'Yes, do that, more of that, I like that, yes, that, oh God I like this.'

Lou judged her ready and climbed up between her legs. Their eyes met, Jody was wild, passionate, wanting more. Lou was cool, in control. He tentatively entered her. He met little resistance, gentle thrusts, he didn't want to hurt her, modern girls could take so much more than Jody could. She threw her head back and lost herself in the moment. Lou could see she was getting close, he let the primitive inside of him take over abandoning any pretense at control. When she spasmed in orgasm, his body let itself go as well, he came.

Lou again became a rational animal and lay beside Jody and held her as she descended from her peek of passion. She opened her eyes, and saw Lou contemplating her. "Can we do that again? … But not just now." She was now asking herself why it had taken her so long to do this. Her body felt both totally happy, and totally spent. She was going to do this again, but her body couldn't manage it at that moment.

"Would I have to be exclusive?" The exclusivity idea was what really freaked out Lou, it was so unnatural. There are times when he had been exclusive, when he was newly in love with his wives, but it had never actually been expected of him.

"Ideally yes. Would you mind? Could you try? I'd like it if you did. There are other ways of satisfying a man, I could try those." Jody spoke quickly, nervously, she didn't want this to disappear.

"You know that from a textbook don't you?"

"Yes."

"I've learnt a few things from life." Jody could see that from what he'd just done to her. "I'll see if I can make this work." Lou wasn't sure why he was indulging her, he didn't think he was falling for her, not just yet. Maybe it was just her fragility, he wanted to protect her. Jody however was teetering on the brink of falling. She wasn't sure what had happened, it wasn't supposed to be like this, she was supposed to bring the son of tec into the fold. Now she was wondering what a non-exclusive relationship would be like.

Amid her confusion, Jody was intrigued by what he said earlier, "So you've been married before?"

"Yeah, three times."

"Did you ever re-up?"

"No they all sunsetted." A regular marriage was seven years, after that the sunset clause dissolved the marriage automatically, unless both parties re-upped. "I was tempted once," Lou's first marriage had seemed still quite alive after the seven years, "but she didn't go for it. One of them, the sunset couldn't come quickly enough." That marriage of Lou's really had only lasted three years, but it was easiest to just let the marriage slip away in seven.

They snuggled. Lou contemplative, Jody totally happy. It was Lou who broke the spell, "I have to be getting back to work." He'd been out of the loop for over a day, he hoped the world hadn't fell apart without him. Or maybe he wished he did to validate his worth.

"Could I spend the night with you?" Not entirely conventional, but Jody was hardly conventional, Lou found the idea attractive. "If you need anything in the meantime, I'm here for you."

"OK, I know how to find you. I've got to be going." Lou got back to the office, the world hadn't fallen apart. Melissa had filled in for him in his absence, for which he was very grateful. There had been plenty of developments, some which really needed him to make a decision.

—

Tuesday 8am, Melissa: "We have discovered more about Stephen20 and Dr Freeman."

"In t-zero Stephen20 retired in 2011. This is unusual in his locus, he is 43 years old. The normal retirement age in that locus is 65. He is able to retire as the company he worked for was bought out in 2011. Stephen20 held a substantial equity stake in the company and the proceeds were enough to fund his retirement. He then took up writing. One of his writing projects is about about Stephen18. We know from MH-1806-J16 that Stephen18 owned slaved, he was writing about this aspect."

"He contacted Dr Freeman as part of his research, slavery is her area of study. Stephen20 and Dr Freeman became friends because of this work. Hence Stephen20 is at Dr Freeman's party where he meets Aimee. The story Stephen20 was writing involves Stephen20 and Stephen18 swapping consciousnesses. This is a somewhat startling development, given that this describes the anomaly. We're putting this into the models of the anomaly, it may be significant."

"This aspect is also what caused Stephen20 to ask Aimee about temporal information flow. It is thus one of the CEs for the CTC paper, and thus for the existence of the Institute itself. This maybe a somewhat fragile line of causality. This is all I have to report."

Lou took the lectern, he looked around the room, the usual choir, and Jody sitting at the back. The night they had spent together had been quite agreeable. "Thank you Melissa. Because of these developments, we have decided to repair t-plus with respect to Stephen20. The first attempt will be made today. Everyone should respond to whatever requests Melissa has. Remember this is important for you, for the whole future of t-zero. That is all for this morning people. Thank you for all your hard work, keep it up."

Later Lou was again in the control room. The big screen showed a restaurant scene, it was dark outside the window, a big M glowing gold was across the street. The subject was looking at Stephen20, a woman's voice said, "Are you gay?"

Stephen20 looked surprised, and answered "Errr, … Nooo."

"Good, I was hoping to take you home this evening. I'd like to wish you a happy birthday properly."

"OK." He didn't look sure how to respond to this. "Well, I'm so glad you tripped on that curb, or we might have never met." The screen went blank.

Melissa spoke, "You have just seen Dawn-plus propositioning, Stephen20 locus 1991, Hollywood California. This is one of the CEs which is causing the t-zero/t-plus delta. We will use this as a confirmation probe that our inverse CE has worked. Please cue to C1." Melissa was asking for the probe to be redirected to a different point in 4-space, that point had been labeled C1.

The big screen came to life, the subject was getting out of a small white sports car, such as was quite common at the end of the twentieth century. The subject looked up to see a woman striding towards him, he first looked at her face, then his attention was drawn to her cleavage. She called out to the subject, "Hey George, Nice wheels."

His reaction was a little hesitant, "Thanks." Then he paused, and said, "But I'm not George."

She again spoke, "Quit with the silly accent, and take me to lunch already."

Again, the subject hesitated, "I can assure you I'm not George, I'm a visitor from Britain." He held a steady gaze on the woman.

Several seconds passed, "Ok, Ok." Then she walked off in the direction she'd come from. The big screen went blank.

Melissa spoke again, "What you have just seen is the interaction between Dawn-minus and Stephen20. In t-zero, they spend the weekend together. Thus Stephen20 and Dawn-plus never meet. This is a key t-zero/t-minus delta. We think we have an inverse CE to repair t-plus. Jane, do you have the inverse CE ready?"

"It's ready."

"Hit it."

On the big screen the scene played out as before. "I can assure you I'm not George, I'm a visitor from Britain." The subjects gaze wasn't as steady this time, he again looked at her cleavage, then said "I would be delighted to take you to lunch. I can offer you the delights of Denny's finest fare." The subject extended his elbow and Dawn-minus wrapped her arm around it. The subject then looked to the entrance to the restaurant and walked towards it.

The screen went blank, a cheer erupted in the room. Melissa spoke up, "Well done team. A perfect injection. Now please cue to C0."

The big screen showed the same restaurant as before, this time the subject was looking out of the window, there was the big gold M glowing, a small white sports car glided by. The subject looked across the table, there was someone else sitting there.

—

Wednesday, 8am. Melissa spoke, "We made an attempt to repair the t-plus time line, such that Stephen20's locus would be San Francisco as in t-zero. We were partly successful, there was no meeting between Stephen20 and Dawn-plus. However, we now find that Stephen20 is again with Dawn-minus as in t-minus. We think we have another inverse CE we can inject into t-plus to eliminate the delta with t-zero. We will be trying this today."

"Also that Stephen20 was writing about Stephen18 does seem to be significant. This factor seems to have caused their Eigenvectors to align to such an unprecedented degree that the swapping of consciousnesses could happen. This is all I have to report."

Later back in the control room, the big screen showed Dawn-minus in the small sports car. "If you ever want to make the boyfriend thing permanent, call me, or even temporary, I'm not proud."

Dawn-minus said, "You're so sweet George." Then she leaned over and kissed the subject. Then she looked down at her hand, she was holding a small card rectangle, Stephen20's business card, he had given her a few moments before. "You know, I think I'd like that. Why don't you come over to my place." The screen went blank.

Melissa again spoke. "You have just seen one of the significant t-zero/t-plus deltas. Dawn-minus and Stephen20 start a more permanent relationship. They will marry and settle in Santa Barbara. We think we have an inverse CE for this event. Jane, are you ready?"

"Ready."

"Hit it!"

The big screen showed the same scene as before, "If you ever want to make the boyfriend thing permanent, call me, or even temporary, I'm not proud." This time the subject did not stay quiet as before. Before Dawn-minus could react, he continued, "Even if you don't need a boyfriend, if I can help with what you're running away from, give me a call. If you need anyone warned off, or beaten up, or killed."

Again, Dawn-minus said, "You're so sweet George.", but didn't kiss him or look at the card, she reached for the car door handle and opened the door and stepped out of the car. She then walked away, the subject looked at her receding form for several seconds, then the screen went blank.

There was a cheer in the room. Melissa spoke, "Well done team, now lets check the rest of the timeline."

—

Thursday 8am. Melissa gave her report as usual. "Yesterday, we made a repair to the t-plus timeline. Stephen20 is no longer married to Dawn-minus. However he is not with Dawn-zero, his locus is London, and is not married. We have identified another CE for the delta and will be injecting an inverse CE into t-plus later today. This is all I have to report."

Later, On the big screen there was a scene in a restaurant, the subject was looking at Stephen20. Gazing might be a more accurate description thought Lou, the subject was staring quite steadily at Stephen20. The subject put down a glass of a dark coloured liquid and looked at Stephen20 again. There was a pause, Stephen20 said, "Would you like some coffee?"

The screen went dark, Melissa spoke up, "In t-zero, Dawn-zero propositioned Stephen20 at this point, in t-plus as we just saw, she seems to have lost the nerve to do it."

"Jane, are you ready to inject the inverse CE?"

"I am." Jane spoke up from across the room.

"Hit it!"

"We have eyes on the subject."

The big screen again showed the scene in the restaurant, the subject was looking at Stephen20. The subject put down the glass of a dark coloured liquid and looked at Stephen20 again. “Are you gay?”

Stephen20 looked a little startled at that question, "No, why do you ask that?”

The subject counted off on her fingers, one: "You've got no girlfriend." Two: "You live with Dave, you went camping with him." Three: "I’ve been flirting with you all evening, you haven’t reacted.”

Stephen20 again looked surprised, "You have?"

“Yes, my pussy is wet and I want you to help me with it.” The subject raised her hand to her face. “Oops, I didn't just say that did I?”

Stephen20 still, or again, looking surprised, "You did." Now he was looking like he was trying to think. “You’re married, I wasn’t thinking of you like that.”

“Why don’t we go back to my room and discuss it.” Stephen20 started looking around for something. The screen went blank.

Melissa spoke up, "Well done team. Please recue to C2." They were wanting to check one more probable CE in the new timeline. One they suspected might be a weak point in the new reality. They had some improbably powerful quantum computer doing probability studies on the timeline, this was where it had pointed to.

An image swam into view on the big screen. It was blurry. "Can we refocus that." Melissa called out.

Greg, on the image processor, called back, "I don't think it's focus, I think it's tears." The subject was crying and it was causing our blurry view. The subject was looking st someone, it could be Stephen20, but it was difficult to say.

"Dawn, you have to get on that plane." The same voice as before, it was Stephen20. The screen went black as the point of view went to the shoulder of the blurry figure. Literally crying on his shoulder.

The blurry Stephen20 came into view again, "Dawn!" The subject looked at the him. “If you don't get in that plane you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”

There was laughter and the subject's view was unsteady. The subject started moving towards what may have been a twentieth century airline gate, someone was holding out their hand. The subject view turned back to Stephen20, very obviously kissed him, then turned back to the other person and handed something to them. There was still chuckling. The subject walked to what was obviously an airplane boarding jetway, the view turned round there was the blurry figure of Stephen20 with his hand raised. The big screen went blank, there was cheer around the room.

Melissa again spoke up, "Well done team, it looks like we're back on track. Take five and we can check the timeline again."

—

Friday 6am. Jody and Lou woke together in Lou's room. They'd been quite inseparable since Monday, or at least Jody had not wanted to be separated, Lou hadn't been quite so keen, but was enjoying the arrangement. He was enjoying the intimacy of the relationship, and was wondering about marriage, even if he hadn't fallen yet. Jody had fallen, completely, totally, she loved Lou with the ardor only a first love can manage. Lou made tender gentle love to Jody, he enjoyed the act, but it was a lot of work compared to the usual way.

8am, Melissa's report. "Yesterday we made significant progress in repairing t-plus. Stephen20 is again married to Dawn-zero and their locus is San Francisco. However, Dawn-zero dies from a brain tumor early in 2006, shortly before the anomaly causes the transference of Stephen20 and Stephen18's consciousness. There is no obvious CE which causes this delta. This is all I have to report."

Lou thought that was a worrying turn of events. Sometimes the butterflies got you. If you made a seemingly insignificant change to a time line, the butterfly effect, or chaos theory if you're precise, caused a big change somewhere down the timeline. Somewhere was an invisible CE, presumably one had caused Dawn's brain tumor. There was nothing they could do about that.

If you could find an obvious CE by just looking for differences in the timelines, it was usually a (relatively) simple matter to inject the inverse CE and put the timeline back on the track you were interested in. When there was no obvious CE, things became much more nebulous. You had to simulate the effect of injected CEs on the timeline, and judge the right thing to do by the result of the simulation. This was much less reliable method of effecting the outcome you were interested in. There was also a fine art in imagining CEs to inject, there were infinite possibilities.

Lou took the lectern. He looked around the auditorium, he wished they had staffed up quicker than they had. Only five project teams, they'd had the budget for seven. "Thank you Melissa. OK people, we now have to work this problem. Sheri is heading up the investigations. All teams will support her in her efforts. Melissa's team will have the day off unless it's absolutely essential. They had been working for ten days straight, they need a break. Thank you people, you all know what to do."

—

Saturday 8am. Sheri was giving her report. "We have been simulating the effect of Stephen18 and Stephen20 on t-plus. The strongest probability of recreating the CTC paper is if we can swap their consciousnesses back to their respective bodies. Currently we find that Stephen20 in 1806 has formed a strong singlet with one of his slaves, who goes by the name of Maria Freeman." More jargon, the singlet state meant that the two individuals involved now behaved like one person with respect to the temporal transference. In more normal terms, they were in love.

"We think the simplest solution to this is to induce a singlet between Stephen18 and Dr Freeman in the 2006 locus. We will be referring to the Maria Freeman from 1806 as Maria18, and the Dr Freeman from 2006 as Maria20." Again, with such similar names, they had to make sure they knew who they were talking about. Basically the plan was to play matchmaker between Stephen18 and Maria20. "If we can form a singlet between Maria20 and Stephen18, we can attempt to transfer the consciousnesses between the singlets in the 1806 and 2006 loci." They were planning on Switching both Stephens back to their respective times, but the Marias would also swap with him.

"The simulations we have run offer no simple solutions to effect this. We currently have a two phase solution which will make Stephen18 and Maria20 intimate. We hope that once this is effected it will be possible for this to form a singlet from that solution." Lou was thinking this was getting really very tenuous. A two phase solution was to inject two separate CE into the timeline, this was just to get the two subjects together. That wasn't even a solution to their problem. Once that was in the timeline they could simulate ways to get to where they really wanted to be.

Lou took the lectern. "Thank you Sheri. Sheri will be taking point on injecting the phase A CE, Melissa, after her well deserved vacation, will take phase B. People, thank you for all you efforts, but I can't stress enough how important this work is. Now get to work."

Later Lou was in the control room as Sheri was attempting the CE injection. On the big screen was an image of someone's living room. The subject was reading a newspaper, they turned the page. The screen went blank.

Sheri spoke up, "What you have just seen is Maria20 paging through the real estate section of her local newspaper. She did not find anything of interest. We intent to change that. Janet are you ready with the CE to inject?

"Ready."

"Ok, start the injection."

The big screen again showed the page of the newspaper. This time the subject's hand paused turing the page, instead it picked up a pen and circled a real estate listing. The screen went blank.

Sheri addressed the room. "Great people, a perfect injection. Now cue to C1."

The screen sprang to life again, this time the subject was entering the lobby of a building and called the elevator. The doors opened, in the elevator waiting to get off was a woman, wearing a black jacket with gold buttons and a yellow miniskirt. Her hair was messy and she was smiling broadly. The subject spoke in a surprised tone, "Angel, what are you doing here. … what have you been up to?"

The woman looked at Maria, smiled some more and said in a very relaxed tone, "Hey Maria, I just had the best fuck of my life. You wanna gets some coffee? I tell you about it."

"Yeah, lets do that."

The screen went dark, and Sheri spoke. "With the meeting that we just engineered, Maria20 will now be introduced to Stephen18 as a sexual partner, something which did not happen in the previous iteration of t-plus."

Lou left the control room to check in on how Melissa was getting on. Things were humming in Melissa's control room, she spoke. "Ok team, lets cue up C0." The big screen showed an office decorated in the style of the nineteenth century. On the desk was a blotter and inkwell, a sheet of paper, a separate sheaf of papers and a framed portrait in oils of Stephen20 and Maria18. A hand held a quill pen and wrote a signature with a flourish on the sheet, then it put the sheet in an envelope and the envelope in a bigger envelope along with the sheaf of papers. The hand sealed the envelope. The screen went black.

Melissa spoke, "Ok team, what you have just seen is Stephen20 in his 1812 locus sending a letter and manuscript to Stephen18 in his 2006 locus. Jane, are you ready with the CE to inject?"

"I am."

"Hit it!"

The screen came back to life. The same scene as before, the hand wrote the signature and put the paper in the envelope. The attention of the subject then fell on the portrait in oils. The subject picked up the portrait, turned it over and took the portrait out of the frame. The portrait was then put in the larger envelope along with the other objects as before." The screen went dark. A small cheer went around the room.

"Great team, the simulations suggest that that portrait will stimulate Stephen18's interest in Maria20 to more than just a sexual partner. Take five everyone, but we need you all back to study the new timeline for the ramifications of this."

Lou went back to his office to await developments. The news was not good, none of the simulations that were tried lead to the a very certain result. The outcome of a simulation was always a probability of the desired outcome, nothing was giving odds Lou liked. That was until late in the day, Melissa said one of her junior team members had come up with a more off the wall solution, which had much better odds.

In the control room the big screen was showing a scene in a shop. A little black girl was running around and screaming. The subject reached for the girl and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Be a good girl Maria," The subject looked up to see two men in uniform entering the shop. "Or, de boere will come and get you." The girl looked at the two men, looked frightened, clung to the subject and was quiet. The screen went black.

Melissa spoke up, "Ok team, what you have just seen is Maria20's mother disciplining the five year old Maria. In this locus, 'de boere', literally means 'the farmers', but is used to refer to the police. Jane, are you ready with the CE to inject?"

"Ready."

"Hit it!"

The screen came back to life. The scene replayed itself, this time the subject told the girl, "Be a good girl Maria," This time the subject continued looking at the girl, "Or Antjie Somers will come and get you." The girl looked frightened, clung to the subject and was quiet. The screen went black.

"Great team, now lets see if this had the desired effect. Please cue to C1." The big screen sang to life, on screen the scene was of a window with a view of a city skyline. The subject looked down, on the subject's lap was a naked black woman lying face down.

The woman spoke in a relaxed voice, "If I promise to be very good, will you do that again?"

The subject spoke in a severe tone, "I shall think on it, if you cease referring to me as Antjie. You should contemplate you rude behavior." The screen went blank, a cheer erupted in the room.

Melissa spoke up, "Great team, this is looking good. Take five, and we'll continue checking the timeline." Melissa looked up, Paul was hovering nearby. He was trying to be casual, but Melissa gave a smile, he was starting to remind her of a puppy, and that suited her. "Hey Paul, wanna fuck?"

Paul was perhaps too eager in his response, "Sure."

Melissa and Paul left the control room chatting, "That was a brilliant CE, however did you think of it."

Paul basked in the approval of Melissa, "Well, I wondered if Stephen20 had any relatives in Cape Town, so I searched for Somers and Cape Town and was surprised by the hits I got on Antjie Somers. After a few simulations, it started to look interesting." Paul and Melissa continued chatting on the way to the rec room.

—

Sunday 8am. Sheri was reporting. "We successfully injected several CE into t-plus. Stephen18 and Maria20 have now formed a singlet. This will facilitate the reverse transference of Stephen18 and Stephen20's consciousnesses. We are now running simulations on how to effect the transfer to give the greatest probability of recreating the CTC paper." Sheri looked at Lou and went back to her seat.

Lou spoke, "Thank you Sheri. OK people, we're almost home. Now is not the time to slack off. If we lose focus, we can still screw this up. So lets go for it people."

Later Lou was in his office when Melissa and Sheri came in together. The two PMs had a disagreement on how to proceed.

Melissa appealed to Lou, "We're seeing a much greater chance of recreating the CTC paper if we also transfer the Louisa and Hanna singlet." Melissa was wanting to swap the consciousnesses of two more people, this pair had been noticed in both 1814 and 2014.

"Is this a joke?" Lou asked as Melissa's plan seemed so outlandish, and it was April first today.

"Not a joke." Was Melissa's dead pan reply. "Do I look like I'm joking?"

Lou was loath to go along with Melissa's plan, and Sheri agreed with him, "You want to play god with two other people, haven't we messed up enough already."

To Lou it was obvious that the two PMs were not going to agree on this matter. So he did what bureaucrats always did, he called a meeting. This meeting was more important than the average meeting, the whole fate of the world, or at least the world as they knew it hinged on this decision.

In prepping for the meeting, Lou reviewed the personnel records, he was worried by the conflict between Melissa and Sheri, he want to make sure there was no hidden agenda between them. The records were on the shielded thumbs, so came straight from t-zero. He was shocked to find that he should have two entire teams which didn't exist, headed by people called Declan and Reg that he didn't know. There were other team members that should be in place that weren't, people he'd never heard of either. They should have all the staffing they had funding for.

That did explain why they were so short staffed. t-null reality was leaking in, none of them existed in t-null. Lou berated himself for not thinking of checking sooner, but his memory seemed perfect. He was shaken to find reality and memory different. He decided to not broadcast this knowledge any further, it would not help moral. Not to mention it's difficult to believe in people who don't exist.

The meeting went on a long time, it discussed all the alternate plans, but in the end it came down to Lou to make a decision. To Lou it felt like the eyes of the world were on him, everyone in the room was looking too him. It just felt like he was under even more scrutiny than that. "We go ahead with the original plan, we leave Louisa and Hanna in their respective timelines." He had spoken, this was now the plan.

—

Monday 8am. Lou spoke. "OK people, this may be the most important day of your life. This is something you will tell your grandchildren about, if you exist to have grandchildren. Today we attempt to repair the t-plus timeline by swapping the consciousnesses of Stephen18 and Stephen20 back to their respective bodies. This will also involve the swapping of Maria18 and Maria20's consciousnesses. The operation is due for 11:23 this morning. Sheri will be running the project. Good luck to all involved. Once the operation is complete I want all available teams investigating t-plus. OK people go get ready, and good luck."

Lou was in the control room at 11:20. This time there wasn't much to see, no notable events on the big screen. If this worked, it would not be immediately obvious. After the operation Lou when back to his office to await the reports from the the various teams. The news was not good, still no CTC paper. He directed the teams to continue working the problem.

—

Tuesday 8am. Lou: "We successfully managed to effect the transfer of Stephen18 and Stephen20's consciousnesses back into their original loci. Also Maria18 and Maria20 also transferred as expected as part of the singlets. However the CTC paper has still not been recreated. Also the transference has unexpectedly changed t-plus. Stephen18 on transferring back to 1814 he sent himself a letter with certain information which has significantly changed Stephen18's circumstances in 2006. The Stephen18/Maria20 singlet is no longer in t-plus."

"This would seem to create a paradox, unless we can recreate the singlet." A murmur went around the room with that pronunciation. If Stephen and Maria were not together, it would not have been possible for Sheri to have made the transfer yesterday. This was something they had to fix, and quickly. "The simulations are promising and we think we have identified a CE which can fix the Stephen18/Maria20 singlet delta. Sheri will be attempting this later today."

Later, Lou was watching Sheri work on the inverse CE injection, the big screen showed a sheet of paper with handwriting on it. A quill pen was writing a series of numbers:

"43.74, 24.36, 111.62).

Live Long and Prosper."

The screen went blank, Sheri spoke up. "What you have just seen is the letter that Stephen18 wrote in his 1820 locus. He sent this letter to himself in his 2006 locus. This is of course sending information back along his timeline. He has been very careful to avoid any appearance of paradox. The only information he included in his letter is information that he gathered himself from his 2014 locus. He seems to have an intuitive understanding of temporal information transfer. We have devised a CE, which to Stephen18 might appear to be a paradox. Janet, are you ready with the inverse CE?"

"Ready."

"Ok, start the injection."

The big screen turned on again, and the same hand was writing the same numbers. This time:

"43.74, 24.36, 111.62) and look out for Maria.

Live Long and Prosper."

Sheri spoke again, "Great people, take five."

—

Wednesday 8am. Lou: "We successfully recreated the Stephen18/Maria20 singlet, which realigns t-plus with t-zero." To say that Lou was relieved that they had dodged the bullet on this one was an understatement. "However the CTC paper has still not been recreated. The only option we can see with any probability of success involves us injecting a CE into t-zero locus Sunday."

A gasp went around the room. What he just proposed was more of less heresy to temporal scientists. They were planning on meddling in their own past. There was really no way to know what the outcome of this would be, no one had ever been stupid enough, or desperate enough, to do this before. Lou was now that desperate.

After the meeting Sheri drew Lou aside, "I've been thinking about the consequences of this."

"How so?"

"I have a theory and I'm starting to feel like a pawn on a chessboard." Lou didn't find that illuminating and just raised and eyebrow. Sheri took that as a sign to continue. "One thing, you've noticed how this anomaly is different. There's no single phase solution for the whole thing."

Lou had noticed that, every other anomaly had been solved with a single inverse CE and that was it. "Uh huh."

"I'm thinking we may be causing temporally-non-local phenomena." Lou couldn't work out what she meant by that, Sheri saw his incomprehension and expanded. "I think you can generalize non-local phenomena, like all the Bell technology uses," Lou considered that, the Bell technologies, as he'd mused earlier, used what had been called 'spooky action at a distance'. A quantum system (like say a photon), could be affected by something it didn't do. You could detect a photon in one place, and it'd be affected by something that happened somewhere else entirely, where the photon had never been. That was the non-local phenomena, only the photon's wave function had been in the other place, not the photon itself.

Sheri continued her thought, "to four dimensions, once you couple things along the negative time axis, as we're just about to do." This was sounding interesting, they were just about to meddle in their own past, or create a coupling along the negative time axis as Sheri put it. "The future now affects the past." that was obvious, they were going to meddle in the past. "But this might not be confined to just one timeline. You have many many potential timelines, and they could all couple to the past. All the possible futures, even ones which never exist, can affect the past. That's the temporally-non-local part."

"Imagine many, many, potential futures, all meddling in the past. We've effected one CE since the point we're going to meddle in. To you, locus Sunday, it'll look like Stephen18 always ended his letter like that. The other potential futures could all be injecting CEs into the past, so what else in the past was caused by these temporally-non-local phenomena?"

Lou found the idea quite startling, "So we're part of a non-collapsed wave function which spans four-space?"

"Precisely. Imagine the computing power available to all the possible futures."

That was startling, the quantum computers they used were so powerful because when you added more "qbits" (the smallest amount of quantum computer) you multiplied its abilities. One qbit could do one thing at once, but 10 qbits could do a thousand at once. Once you got to 280 qbits, you could do more things at once than there were particles in the universe. That's how they managed to simulate the world in usable time, they had many, many, times 280 qbits of computing power. Multiply that by the number of possible futures and the result was inconceivable.

Sheri continued, "Once we inject the CE, we'll never have been in this locus. But our actions we no longer will have done here, will still have affected the past. Effect without causation, but not a paradox. Usually, it'd make it possible to fix things with just one CE."

"But this one isn't going to be solved by once CE."

"Yeah, this one's different, we gave up putting things back together, and we had the deadline to meet. We just wanted to make things congruent between t-zero and t-plus. We set ourselves that problem, not the problem of fixing everything. Doesn't the sudden appearance of the Louisa and Hanna singlet in 2014 seem very convenient?" Lou thought she had a point, he'd seen some similar convenient coincidences in the past. "Once you get desperate enough to meddle in your own past, this'll happen. It'll cause Novikov consistency, you have an infinitely powerful system in a Moravec loop to put things right."

"So we might have done this before and never known?"

"Exactly. Think of it, there are many more of us concurrently working on this problem."

Lou didn't find this idea comforting, and wondered how often his past had been meddled with. He was feeling like that pawn Sheri mentioned. Was that why he took leave of his senses and suddenly took up with Jody? He was second guessing all the decisions he'd ever made now.

They entered the control room and sat at the back. On the big screen, Lou was looking at a familiar sight. It was the meeting from Sunday, from his point of view. He was the subject or rather, himself locus Sunday, was the subject. The subject spoke: "We go ahead with the original plan, we leave Louisa and Hanna in their respective timelines." The screen went blank.

Melissa spoke up. "You have just seen that in Sunday's meeting Lou came to a decision. We now agree that this was the wrong decision. We will now attempt to inject a CE into t-zero. Jane, is the CE ready."

"Ready."

"Hit it."

On the big screen Lou again watched his actions from Sunday. "We'll go with Melissa's plan. Prepare to swap the Louisa and Hanna singlets as well."

—

Monday 8am. Lou spoke. "OK people, this may be the most important day of your life. This is something you will tell your grandchildren about, if you exist to have grandchildren. Today we attempt to repair the t-plus timeline by swapping the consciousnesses of Stephen18 and Stephen20 back to their respective bodies. This will also involve the swapping of Maria18 and Maria20's consciousnesses. In addition, we will also be swapping the consciousnesses of the Louisa and Hanna singlet. The operation is due for 11:23 this morning. Melissa will be running the project. Good luck to all involved. Once the operation is complete I want all available teams investigating the new t-plus. OK people go get ready, and good luck."

Lou was in the control room at 11:20. This time there wasn't much to see, no notable events on the big screen. If this worked, it would not be immediately obvious. After the operation Lou when back to his office to await the reports from the the various teams. Though he didn't think he needed the reports, the sky outside his office was the normal blue with clouds, not the angry purple it had been for the last two weeks.

He tried the Bell-channel to the outside world, this time it worked. He tweeted the news to the facility and you could here the cheer ringing through the hallways. They weren't totally free now, they'd probably have some more cleaning up to do, but now they had the facilities of the outside world to help them. They were no longer alone. Of course this was cause for celebration, they had the biggest party the facility had ever, or would ever see.

At the party, Melissa found Paul and told him, "There's something I'd like to discuss, why don't we go to my room." Her tone was business like, but this was unusual, what did they need to discuss that they couldn't in any conference room. Being invited back to someone's personal space was unusual. Whatever, Paul was happy to tag along, he'd been enjoying their sex. He'd practically fucked no one but Melissa that week, being so exclusive was unusual. He really did enjoy the old broad.

Melissa's room wasn't too far away in the accommodation wing. Melissa ushered Paul in and shut the door behind her. Paul was starting to get a bit nervous. Melissa was acting funny, he wasn't used to being shut in like this. Usually people lived their lives in public. Being used to living in public was also one reason why no one cared about the institute. It was well known that it could snoop on the recent past, it was used in judicial investigations to solve what little crime wasn't discouraged by normal surveillance. Judicial enquiries usually didn't reach closer than a few months ago though, to avoid intersecting the earth in 4-space.

Melissa addressed Paul, "So Paul, you should know I've turned off all the media recording in here."

That made no sense to Paul, "What?"

Melissa wasn't surprised at his incomprehension, the kids these days just didn't know, or care, what privacy was. "Nothing you do or say in here can be played back later."

"What?!?!?" Not a question, Paul was on the verge of Panic. This was not something he'd ever considered. Not that he thought it was impossible, he just didn't think of it. This wasn't normal.

She took his hands, Paul looked down startled. He forgot about the lack of recording, that was no longer on top of his mind, this old broad was totally kinky, holding hands?!?! And they were still dressed.

She asked quite simply, "Would you like to kiss me?" Paul was again shocked, no wonder she'd turned off the recording, she was beyond kinky. Seeing his indecision, she said, "I think you'll like it." She leaned forwards and kissed him quite chastely on the lips. "This is going to be easier if we sit." She guided him to the bed. There she held him and smooched him.

Putting the shock behind him, Paul found this to be quite a turn on. Melissa dragged him down so they were lying and kissed him some more. He thought 'what the hell', and tried to return the kiss. This was the most erotic thing that he'd ever done, the naughtiest and most taboo, and they were still fully clothed. He'd heard rumors of people 'retracing the bases', he wasn't sure what was on each base, but if you ever managed to get to first base you got to kiss. Now he was living it, he never thought he'd ever get to first base.

Melissa took one of his hands and slid it up her crop top, so he was feeling her boob. 'Is that second base.' Thought Paul, before his mind emptied and he was just the sensation of feeling a boob. This was too much for him, he came in his pants. Melissa noticed Paul slump as he came. She smiled to herself. Then asked Paul, "Do you mind if I lick that up?" Not waiting for an answer she undid his shorts and licked up what cum she could find. Then she cleaned off his shrunken penis, and popped it in her mouth. It grew hard pretty quickly.

Paul totally did not know what to do. He was shaken by the proceedings, he was even more shaken his unexpected orgasm, and not a little ashamed of it. Now with a mouth around his penis, third base? He was lost.

Melissa stopped sucking on Paul and went to hug him, "Thank you." She said. Paul wondered what he was being thanked for, but currently couldn't form a coherent enough thought to ask. "I could hug you, kiss you or suck your dick if you want me to. Or there's something you could do for me."

Paul was still confused but she seemed to want something, "What's that?"

"Go down on me, lick my genitals." That seemed like a good idea to Paul, doing what Melissa wanted seemed like a good idea to Paul. If you'd told him that half an hour ago, he wouldn't have believed you.

"OK." Melissa lay on her back, took off her panties and spread her legs. Paul looked at her, "What do I do?"

"Go lie down there." Melissa suggested, he did. "Now lick here, gently." Pointing to her slit. Paul did, but not before noting she had a sparkly stud piercing her clit hood. He hadn't noticed that previously. Piercings in general were out of fashion. He'd seen plenty in his job, but never thought of a piercing there. She did seem to like what he was doing, she moaned appreciatively. Then she pointed to her clit and said, "Lick around there, carefully." Paul was thinking this was awfully familiar, hadn't they looked in on a scene like this sometime in the last week.

Familiar or not, it had an effect on Melissa, she soon orgasmed, and unusually she was still. Paul was on the verge of panic, when he again thought he'd seen this recently. He held her hand, called to her, "Melissa?" She opened her eyes and smiled. Then she held out her hands for him to hug her. Paul looked around, unconsciously seeing if anyone was watching their unorthodox coupling. He held onto Melissa tightly, Melissa smiled to herself again.

She had her own agenda to put forward, she asked, "Did you like the diamond stud?" Paul was non committal though being diamond would explain why it was so sparkly. "My husband gave it to me for our diamond wedding," She hastened to add, "that's our sixtieth wedding anniversary." Higher anniversaries were increasingly uncommon these day, she thought he might need that explanation.

Paul had several thoughts on those revelations, not least of which she was married, and he'd just been intimate with her. Pure sex was one thing, no one though twice about having pure sex with a married woman or man, that was expected. But intimacy, kissing, holding hands and the like that belong inside a marriage. In these days when crime, at least successful crime, was almost impossible with everyone watching everything all the time. There were still reports of a jealous spouse coming to blows or worse over extra-marital intimacy. He looked over his shoulder imagining a jealous husband stalking him.

Melissa tried to put him at ease, "Don't worry, he likes to watch." That didn't help Paul much, it didn't make much sense to him. She explained further, "He likes it when I'm intimate and make love to a young stud like you, he likes to watch me."

"How's he going to watch if you turned off the recording?"

"Well, I'd like to take you home when we can get out of here, he can watch us in person. We don't record that sort of thing." Paul was torn, he really wanted to please Melissa, maybe more than anything else in the world, he wanted to please her. But her kinkiness seemed to know no bounds.

He decided not to worry about that just yet. "You've been married sixty years? You've re-upped ten times?"

Melissa didn't correct his arithmetic, "Yes, I was married last century. And no, you shouldn't ask me how old I am, you do know it's rude to ask a woman's age, don't you?" Paul didn't know that, he very rarely thought about anyone's age, most everyone looked the same age. You could tell an older broad by her manner, but he didn't think about exactly how old they were. For Melissa's part she knew she wasn't a spring chicken when she'd married Curt, she didn't like thinking of exactly how old that made her. When she was young, people her age now were OLD, not forever young like she was.

There was one more thing to add, "We've never re-upped, there was no sunset clause in our vows. In my day when you married it was forever. We like it that way." Intellectually Paul knew this was true, but that was something from the history books, or through a probe. He'd never thought people he knew, would be married forever. This just added to her mystique. "We should get back to the party, people will be wondering where we are." Paul agreed, but was considering the future was going to be anything but boring with Melissa.

Lou wasn't at the party, he was busy dealing with the outside world, there was a lot of explanation necessary, there was going to be a lot of cleaning up and (paperless) paper work to do. Jody came into the office while he was busy, and kissed him. Lou was glad that the Bell-channel was text only, not holo, that would have taken some explaining if the outside world had seen that. She did make life interesting, and he could think of much worse things than spending seven years of his life with her. With half his attention focused on the Bell-channel, he asked Jody, "Would you like to get married?" It wasn't a question which Lou thought needed much of his attention.

Jody on the other hand, did think it important. She squealed, "Yes, yes yes." Then she kissed him a few more times.

"OK, great. Let me finish up here and we can discuss it." Reluctantly Jody let him at his work. They were going to have to discuss exclusivity, and sunset clauses at least.

—

Report of the Temporal Oversight Committee, into the anomaly MH-1806-J16


Appendices

Supporting material, writings of some of the key figures.

These documents have been recovered from probes of some of the key figures in the various timelines. They show background to some of the decisions made by the temporal investigators trying to repair the timelines.



Forum post by Stephen20 in the t-plus7 Timeline
On meeting Dawn-plus.
Re: What song describes how you met?

"The Deli Song" by Dean Friedman. I met my wife when she literally bumped into me on Hollywood Boulevard. I was walking along distracted by the very shiny McDonalds when something came at me from the right, I reflexively fended it off and found myself holding a woman by the boobs. (Very nice boobs.) She said "If you're going to feel me up in public, you should at least tell me your name, and take me to dinner."

Then she laughed, I joined in and we went to the cafe across the road. It wasn't four in the morning and I didn't have a Cornbeef on Wry. At the end she came out and asked me if I were gay. It seems I'd been missing her flirting with me. When I said I wasn't she said she wanted to take me home for my birthday (which was that weekend). That's when I said "I'm so glad you tripped in the curb, or we might have never met." I'd been playing that album in the car on the way to Hollywood.

Without skipping a beat she said, "I must have been a sight, I was all perturbed, helpless and sopping wet." We laughed and she took me to her place. She said she really was sopping wet, though I didn't notice. She'd had a fight with her husband and was horny and looking for someone to pick up. I happened to be that someone.

The song almost turned into "Lucille" (by Kenny Rogers) when her evicted husband turned up the next morning while we were in bed. They had an flaming row at the front door, and I gallantly interposed myself and told him to get lost. In my mind he did look like a mountain and I damn near collapsed from too much adrenaline after he left. We had a mind blowing quickie up against the back of the front door after that.



Journal Entry Stephen20 t-plus timeline, "Captain's Personal Log. May 18th"
On telling Aimee about the temporal transference.

Well that was weird, we just had Aimee and Tony over for dinner and no one got naked and there was no sex. Well we did warn them we just wanted to discuss things. I sent a limo for them as usual, when they arrived Hanna squealed and went to hug Tony, she does seem to like him a lot. Tony seemed please to see her, he picked her up and kissed her as he does. Louisa was Louisa, and made do with a handshake and peck on the cheek, I think she's also keen on him. Maybe it's just lust.

Louisa and Hanna were guests this evening, not staff for once, so they were dressed up as well. We'd said "Dressy", so Aimee was in her Cardinal red number, Maria in another ruffly purple number, Louisa in classy black and Hanna in a short (shorter than the others) green dress. All the girls looked stunning. Tony seemed to appreciate it

We got drinks, and everyone was relaxing. Maria started with the easy bit, "So we're planning the wedding, I wanted you to be my bridesmaid."

Aimee looked a little shocked, then pleased. "Why, I'd love to Maria." They got up and hugged.

My turn, I turned to Tony, "And would you be my best Man?" Me and Tony weren't exactly close, I liked the guy, but I didn't have many male friends in this time. The people I knew in 2006 had drifted away while the other Stephen was here, he kept mostly female company.

Tony and Aimee exchanged some meaningful glances and Aimee said, "He'd love to."

To which Tony chipped in a non committal "Sure".

I piped up again, "Great, let celebrate." We got another round of drinks, I thought they might help with the next bit.

"If you two are going to do that, there's something we really need to tell you first." They didn't seem to know what to think about that.

Maria took up the thread, "You know how we said it seemed like we'd known each other for two hundred years. That's not entirely untrue. We met in 1806."

There were general expressions of disbelief from Aimee and Tony. But then Hanna chimed in from where she was sitting next to Tony hugging him. "It's true."

That quietened Tony some, he looked to Hanna and me. "You're going to have to explain some."

I tried for a condensed version, "I went to bed sometime in 2006, then woke up in 1806. Maria was one of my slaves, I freed her, Louisa and Hanna were my Lady's Maids, we came to an arrangement. I'd displaced my sixth great grandfather, and he lived my life here. That's the Stephen you knew. We lived in the nineteenth century until 1814, then I found myself back in 2014. Maria, Louisa and Hanna came with me. The Maria, Louisa and Hanna who were here got stranded in the nineteenth century along with the other Stephen back in his normal time."

Maria chimed in, "So I'm not the Maria you knew. I changed because I'm not her, not because I met Stephen."

"Well that explains some things." Said Aimee.

Tony asked, "How is that possible."

I responded, "I hoped Aimee might have some ideas on that, kind of seems like cosmic topology to me, closed time-like lines and that sort of thing. It's all a bit beyond me, as well as the other Stephen, he was researching it though."

Aimee looked a bit thoughtful, but said "Well, the classic problem with a curve is it has to intersect an event horizon to close in four space. I have been working on this crazy idea for years on how it'd be possible without the event horizon." She addressed Tony, "You know hon, that CTC paper."

"The thing with the tensor calculus? That's all Greek to me."

I said, "I know some Greek, I probably find it just as impenetrable."

Aimee continued, "I always thought the idea was so outlandish it couldn't be true. I never had the courage to show it to someone who could understand it. But if there has been demonstrated information transfer along the negative time axis, that'd validate parts of it."

"I'd prefer not to demonstrate it too far and wide, we tend to keep quiet about it for obvious reasons." Was my response.

That's mainly it. We all talked, just talked, about the nineteenth century. We showed them the source papers and letters we'd received. They seemed reasonably convinced by the end of the evening. They're coming back next week for Hanna's birthday, I'm sure we'll make up for the sex then.



"Jasmine and Me." Tony Burris in timeline t-minus.
Events with Jasmine Humphries.
See file "Jasmine".


"Scholarship Essay: The Day I came of Age." Tony Burris in timeline t-zero and t-plus.
Events when rejected by Jasmine Humphries.
See file "Essay".


"(Remembering) My Senior Prom" Tony Burris in timeline t-zero and t-plus.
Further critical point with Jasmine Humphries.
See File "Prom"


"Aimee, Jasmine and Me." Tony Burris in t-zero, t-plus
On meeting Aimee.
See file "Aimee".


"Conversational French (or the Reluctant Rapist)" Tony Burris in t-zero, t-plus
More on Aimee/Tony
See file "Chauffeur"


"Charlie the Chauffeur" Tony Burris in t-zero, t-plus
More on Aimee/Tony
See file Charlie


"Happy Birthday, Stranger (in a strange and happy land)" Stephen20 in timeline t-plus.
On meeting Dawn-minus.
See file "Birthday".


"Why Chicago?", Stephen20 in timeline t-zero, t-plus
On meeting Dawn-zero.
See file "WhyChicago". [Note, this file is missing.]


"I Want to be you Slave" Stephen20 in timelines t-minus, t-plus, locus 1806.
On meeting Maria18.
See file "IWTBYS".


"Louisa & Hanna" Stephen20 in timelines t-minus, t-plus, locus 1806.
On the relationship with Louisa and Hanna.
See file "L&H".


"Gaussian distribution" Stephen20 in timelines t-minus, t-plus, locus 1810.
On traveling in the nineteenth century with Maria18, Louisa and Hanna.
See file "gauss".


"Back in Time." Stephen20 in timeline t-plus, locus 2014.
On being swapped back to locus 2014.
See file "BackinTime".


"Sex in a Porsche." Stephen20 in timeline t-plus, locus 2014.
On Maria18's introduction to the automobile.
See file "wsgfad".


"The Other Stephen's Story." Stephen18 in timeline t-plus, locus 2006 - 2014.
On his time in the twenty first century.
See file "OthStephen".


"Both Sides Now." Tony Burris and Stephen20 in t-plus.
Meeting between Aimee, Maria18, Tony Burris and Stephen20.
See file "AimeeTony".


"Hanna's Birthday Party." Tony Burris and Stephen20 in t-plus.
More on Aimee, Maria18, Tony Burris, Stephen20 with Hanna and Louisa.
See file "HannaBirthday"


"An Unwise Bet." Tony Burris and Stephen20 in t-plus.
More on Aimee, Maria18, Tony Burris, Stephen20 with Hanna and Louisa.
See file "Unwise"

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