My name is Ted Flockman. I’m sure you’ve heard of me. I have set five world records in hunting and fishing. I have been almost eaten, trampled or otherwise dispatched by animals at least 17 times, by my count. I have survived two plane crashes and a shipwreck. Oh, yeah, and I saved the world (possibly the universe) not long ago. But we won’t be getting to that part for a while.

The story that ensues is that of my career as a professional time traveler. So I will start with how I got a job at Naughthenny Moore’s Time Travel Association. My parents were missionaries to the Central American Republic of El Salvador. I grew up there, and I spent half of my adult life there. I avidly followed the development of the time machine (or “Temporal Displacement Device”) since it was announced as a theoretical possibility in 2044. As an imaginative 11-year-old, I dreamed of going back in time and watching the Aztecs build their great temples.

At that time, the government of El Salvador was completing the world’s first anti-matter extractor, the only device that could possibly generate enough power to run a TDD. As of this writing, it is the world’s only anti-matter extractor, thanks to an international ban the UN Council on Science and Technology imposed the next year. I knew that when a TDD was built, it would be in El Salvador, and I spent the next 15 years making sure I had the right resume to ride on it. I decided my best course was to major in anthropology and ecology. To get the best possible credentials, I went to college in the United States, ended up majoring in ecology and minoring in anthropology, and was captain of the rugby team. I should mention that I’m just shy of seven feet tall and weigh 295 pounds. When the U.S. went to war with Indonesia in 2053, I was drafted.

Fortunately, I suffered a “million-dollar-wound” falling out of a sequoia, and by the time I got well, the crisis had blown over. I still had to do military service, but I wasn’t sent outside the U.S. Instead, I spent a couple of years helping the National Guard control forest fires. I then spent five years working as a forester in different parts of South and Central America. One of my jobs was the very hazardous task of spraying cocaine crops with genetically engineered blight in Columbia. In 2061, the news finally came: A working TDD had been built, and a consortium called “Naughtenny Moore” had been established to run it. I sent in a resume before it had even been tested. A month later, I was invited to come to the temporal displacement facility for testing.

I took a cab to the former air base where the time machine was located. The cabbie dropped me off in front of a rickety gate, which apparently hadn’t been painted since the base closed. There was a newly paved road leading to a large airplane hanger. I was walking down it when a Japanese man drove up in a plastic-hulled vehicle called a Thing, after a 20th-century vehicle that it casually resembled. “Hello,” he said. “Are you a job applicant or another journalist? If you are an applicant, you will have to show me the letter inviting you here.”
I gladly pulled out the letter. “Where do I need to go?” I asked.

“Hop in and I’ll take you there,” the Japanese man said. I got in the front passenger seat. A Thing’s steering system is more like an airplane joystick than a steering wheel, and there are two control yokes on the dash. I was already familiar with the system, but it was disorienting to ride without a steering wheel in front of me. As we drove toward the hangar, the driver introduced himself. “I am Louis Tanaka. I’m in charge of security. One part of my job has been screening applicants.” I glanced at him worriedly. “Don’t worry, the police report said you didn’t start that fight.”

At that moment, we reached the hangar I saw that the giant doors had been removed and replaced with a brick wall. The new wall held several normal doors, which we entered through. The vast airplane hangar had been transformed into a museum. The only exhibits so far were a pair of antlers ten feet in span, an animatronic dinosaur, and a pair of dinosaurian arms eight feet long. Lou identified the arms as the only known parts of “Deinocheirus mirificus.” The only other person there at the moment was a black man. “G’day, mate,” the black man said in a jarring Australian accent. “I’m Dr. Carlos Wrzniewski. Who are you?”
“I’m Ted Flockman,” I said. “I take it you’re the competition.”

“Not actually,” Tanaka said. “The Association’s goal is to form a three-person team to manage our expeditions. The team will be composed of a field manager, a field technology specialist and a scientific advisor. The field managers will delegate other jobs to paying members of an expedition. You applied as field manager, while Dr. Wrzniewski is applying to be a scientific advisor. Therefore, you are not in competition with each other. In fact, since the Association wants teams who work well together, you should strive to be polite and helpful to each other.”

“Maybe you can tell me what you have on this guy,” Carlos said jovially.
Lou cheerfully obliged: “Mr. Flockman is a professional forester, with over ten years of experience in his chosen field. He spent a short time in the United States National Guard. He is fluent in 3 languages, and has experience operating planes, bulldozers, heavy trucks and even tanks.” I winced at that last “credential”. Right after I left the National Guard, I had spent a few months with World War 2 Re-enactors’ Society. I quit after a disastrous recreation of the Ardennes Offensive ended in victory for the Nazis.

“What’s your background, Dr. Wrzniewski?” I asked.
“Please, call me Carlos,” Carlos broke in.
“As you may have guessed,” Lou said amiably, “Carlos is from Australia. For the last five years, he has been a Professor of Herpetology at the University of Sydney. He’s renowned for giving his students extensive hands-on training in the Australian outback. Before he received that position, he was a member of Australia’s armed forces.” Carlos grew visibly grim. I could guess why: He had undoubtedly been one of the thousands of Australian troops who fought in the war against Indonesia. Tanaka confirmed that thought: “During the ‘Short War’, Carlos was a corporal in a force sent to flank the defenders of Jakarta. Needless to say, he has a lot of survival skills. He also has several medals.”

“Now that Ted and I know each other’s backgrounds,” Carlos said, “what do we have to do to show that we’re fit for these jobs?”

“There will be a series of four tests,” Tanaka said. “You will take them together. But first, I’ll introduce you to our field technician.” We reached another former hangar, which was clearly being used to store vehicles. Carlos froze when he saw the large vehicle parked beyond the open door. Even I felt a twinge of fear when I realized what it was: an Indonesian Ora 6X6 armored car. The wedge-shaped vehicle resembled nothing so much as an enlarged late 20th-century sports car. This one was almost 15 feet tall, and sported wheels more than 5 feet in diameter. About six feet of its height was a second story added to the standard hull.

“Sweet Mother! It’s a command vehicle!” Carlos exclaimed. “How could they afford this?”

“Actually, it was donated,” someone said in a husky voice. I looked, and saw a red-headed woman descending a retractable staircase at the rear of the vehicle. She was about 5-foot-1 and a little on the stocky side, wearing shorts and a tank top. Suddenly, I felt nervous, and nearly didn’t respond when she held out a hand to shake. “I’m Dr. Dianna Gonzalez. Right now, I’m working on putting a tire on this thing. The big problem is that I have to reset the vehicle’s computerized air-pressure control system. Maybe you two can help.”

“I don’t know much about software,” I said.
Dianna laughed. “I won’t need help with that. I’m a doctor of computer science. I just don’t know much about off-road vehicles, and I certainly can’t install the new wheel all by myself.” She pointed to a giant wheel against the wall. “I’d welcome any feedback on what settings to use. I could also use a little help reading the Javanese instructions.”

The work went very well. Fortunately, we were able to use a forklift to carry the wheel up to the car. Carlos and I still had to manhandle the wheel a little before we could attach it. Once the wheel was in position, we screwed on the massive lug nuts. Then we helped with choosing the pressure settings. At first, I was a little distracted by Dianna, but the attraction quickly gave way to professionalism. Dianna spent most of the time asking Carlos questions about the vehicle. As we were finishing up, she asked him, “What does Ora mean?”

“Ora is another name for the Komodo dragon,” Carlos said. “That was a species of giant lizard that used to live on an island in Indonesia. They were killed off about 20 years ago, by a combination of habitat loss, disease and cannibalism. They were good swimmers and very stealthy hunters, so Indonesia named its line of armored cars after them.”

After the wheel was installed, Dianna gave us a tour of the Ora. The vehicle was 35 feet long. “This version of the armored car was designed as a mobile headquarters for military commanders. It ended up more like a rolling hotel room.” She pointed out different features as we walked through the vehicle. “It has several computers, beds, a shower, a toilet, a refrigerator, a kitchen and a miniature medical lab. It also has a little crane mounted in the rear; that will be handy for bringing big animals aboard. Once we get it running, this will be a perfect mobile base camp. But, we won’t be able to take it on our first expedition.” As I stepped out, I hit my head on the doorframe. It was the third time I had hit my head during the tour.
“It’s a bit cramped for an Anglo,” I complained.

“Well,” Dianna said finally, “you’re the most promising applicants I’ve worked with. Congratulations—you’ve passed the first test! C’mon, don’t look surprised. Did you think the Indonesians would sell us a car without all the wheels on? Or that I wouldn’t know the right settings? We wanted to test your skills with machinery, but we didn’t want you to either stress out over it or to treat it strictly as an abstract exercise. So, we staged it as an impromptu request. If you can do this well on the other tests, I’m sure we’ll be working together on a permanent basis. “You’re entitled to a break before your next test, and I’m overdue for lunch. Would you like to join me on the observation deck?”

I eagerly accepted, and Carlos went along. The observation deck was a kind of porch at the end of the lower balcony. The fridge was stocked with sandwiches. “So, how did you get a job here?” I asked Dianna.

“I got involved in time travel as a graduate student,” she said. “I helped Dr. Julius Werner choose the computer that controls the TDD. On my recommendation, he held up the construction of the TDD for a couple of years until we could get hold of the latest molecular computer. I also helped set up the control room; you’ll see that before the end of the day.” After a pause in conversation she asked Carlos, “Are you a Catholic?”

He seemed surprised by the question. “Ah. No, don’t misunderstand. I say naught against Mary nor Her Son, but the only one I’ll swear by or to is the good Earth Mother. I follow pantheism. Not much of a religion, really, more a set of guidelines for dealing with nature and each other.”

Dianna turned to me. “How about you?” she asked. “You follow any particular faith?”

“I was raised a Protestant,” I said circumspectly. “I haven’t gone to church in a while, though.” Not since my parents died, I added silently.

“Me, I’m a Christian,” Di said. “I grew up in the Catholic church. I don’t really identify myself with any particular denomination. You should go take your other tests. I may drop in to watch.” She walked away, acting nonchalant, but I noticed her glance over her shoulder.

For the second test, Lou took us to a room that simulated a prehistoric forest. “This is a restoration of an Early Permian North American forest,” he said. “Your task is to cross it. The problem is, there are two large predators in the way. If either of you sets foot within two meters of either, you both fail the test.” I inspected the room. “I know we’re before the dinosaurs were around. What was there? Big lizards?”

“The dominant predator was Dimetrodon,” Carlos said. “You know, big critter with a tall fin. It looks kind of like a lizard, but it’s really a synapsid—one of the ancestors of the mammals—probably the first terrestrial animal to specialize in eating other large vertebrates. The only other large predators would be giant amphibians–picture salamanders with the size, shape and lifestyle of crocodiles.” He pointed to a pool. “We stay clear of that at all costs.” I spotted several lizard-like creatures, none of them large enough to threaten us. Then I spotted the sail. “Look,” I said. “That’s a Dimetrodon, isn’t it?”

Carlos looked at it critically.

“No, it’s not,” he said. “The ribs are the wrong shape. They’re curved, see? A Dimetrodon’s are straight. That would be an Edaphosaurus, an herbivorous synapsid. Perfectly harmless. But you see that thing there? Looks like a really tall fern? That is a Dimetrodon. And that dark shape in the water would be an amphibian. So, we’re good.” We strolled confidently through the artificial forest. Then Carlos froze. “You know that sail that looks like a fern?” he said. “Looking at it from this angle, I think it really is a fern.”

“Let’s stop and think things over,” I said. “Are there any more possible sails?” We looked around. There seemed to be none. “In that case, we should be looking for another amphibian.” We looked carefully. I was the one who finally found it. It was artfully concealed under a log. If we had stayed our course, we would practically have stepped on it. “Well,” Carlos said ruefully, “that shows how much help the experts are.”

For the next test, Lou led us to a firing range. There were a dozen targets shaped like various prehistoric animals. They were already so riddled with bullet holes that I could see foliage behind them. Lou unlocked a large shed. This took some time, since there were six separate locks on the door. The wooden door swung open to reveal a second, metal door with a panel full of buttons beside it. Lou punched eight buttons and inserted a key to open the second door. “This is the Association’s armory,” Lou said with obvious pride. “Take whatever weapons suit your fancy, but remember to give them back after the test. Hold on a moment while I open the safe with the really heavy stuff.”

I could understand why there were so many locks on the shed. The Armory was a true anarchist’s toy shop. The walls were lined with dozens of weapons, mostly rifles and shotguns. I took a look at the boxes of ammunition. Many of them were military armor-piercing rounds. I whistled in amazement, wondering what the “really heavy stuff” was. Carlos was more critical. “These are all 5.6 and 4.7 millimeter weapons. Minimal stopping power; I wouldn’t trust them for protection against anything larger than a dog,” he said. He hefted a semi-automatic .38 rifle. “But these Tactical rifles are very nice.”

Just then, Lou opened the safe. We stared in awe at what was inside. The safe held three identical rifles, each one four-and-a-half feet long. I quickly estimated that they were about .90 caliber. The weapons had a Spartan design, with the long barrel protruding from a boxy plastic frame. The guns had a forward-sweeping grip, which I had previously seen only on a vintage Boys anti-tank rifle. By all appearances, these weapons could have been built with the same purpose in mind. Every possible measure had been taken to reduce recoil. There was a large muzzle brake, numerous tiny holes in the barrel, a padded stock and a folding unipod. On top of these features, the barrel was designed to slide backward in the frame during firing. Two springs hooked the breach to the frame, so that the sliding barrel would stop sooner. I would later learn that there was a third spring inside the stock.

“The test will be in two parts,” Lou said. “First, you will be tested for proficiency with standard firearms, then you will be tested for your ability to handle one of these: the A-Cube Eliminator. It is a bolt-action rifle of 22 mm caliber, with a capacity of five rounds in a magazine in the stock plus one in the chamber. Each bullet weighs 125 grams. The cases are based upon the .50 Browning machine gun round. As you can see, extreme measures have been taken to mitigate recoil; but, it still knocks inexperienced users off their feet. In theory, it can be fired from the shoulder, but I definitely would not recommend it. The last applicant to try it was knocked back over a meter.”

When we came out, Dianna was waiting. “I always enjoy this part,” she said enigmatically. I was a little perturbed to find that Carlos, despite his military background, was not a very good shot. He averaged only one hit for every three-round burst from an assault rifle. This was in spite of an excellent gun sight and a sophisticated stock that kept the user from feeling any recoil until the end of a burst. He faired much better with a shotgun. In contrast, I was on the top of my form. I put shot after shot into the flat wooden targets, but in the end, I didn’t score many more hits than Carlos. On consideration, I decided that Carlos might be even more effective than me in dealing with emergencies. Where I would take time to aim at the most sensitive parts of an animal, Carlos would immediately fire an instinctive burst. In a crisis, he could be expected to shoot before I did.

“Excellent, both of you,” Lou said. “Now for the Eliminator.” Carlos went first. He handled the weapon as if it were a baby or a live bomb. He crouched, and set the unipod on a bench rest that had been provided for us. At his first shot, he hit a target painted to look like a mammoth in the ear. He cursed in pain at the recoil. He handled the second shot better, hitting the mammoth in the forehead. The third shot missed. Carlos handed the gun to me, shaking his head. “This gun ought to have wheels on it,” he said. “I think you can handle it, but don’t try anything fancy.”

I hefted the gun, examining it carefully. It was very light for its size at less then ten kilos. On impulse, I folded up the unipod. I glanced at Di through the corner of my eye. She was covering her mouth, as if expecting something horrible to happen. I felt like Arthur, gripping the hilt of Excalibur. Finally, I braced myself and pulled the trigger.

I don’t think words can describe what it feels like to fire an Eliminator. My first shot left me short of breath and a little dizzy. Spots flashed before my eyes. But I was still standing, right where I had been before, and when my vision cleared, I could see daylight between the mammoth’s eyes. Dianna whooped, then giggled self-consciously. I massaged my shoulder, and then fired again. The second shot seemed easier. Feeling new assurance, I aimed my last shot at the mammoth’s chest. The sheet metal target began to creak. Then, with an incredible crash, it fell to the ground. Now everyone cheered. “The final test should be strictly a formality,” Lou said. “Let’s go meet Lacerto Leo and Old Rip.”

“Lacerto Leo” turned out to be a reptile handler named Leonard Simmons. He led us to a large enclosure that held a twenty-one-foot-long crocodile. “Gentlemen, meet Old Rip, the salt water crocodile,” the trainer said enthusiastically. “He’s a professional movie star, and he attacks wildlife-management trainees as a side job. He will administer your test on rescue. You should know that he holds two Guinness World Records: one for being the largest reptile in captivity, and one for wearing the world’s largest set of dentures. He knocked out all his real teeth fighting with other crocodiles, and eventually they stopped growing back. His artificial teeth are made of rubber, so he probably won’t be able to bite any limbs off. However, he can still injure you, and if he manages to get you in his pool, he has a very good chance of drowning you.”

The trainer brought out a life-sized dummy. The dummy was quite crude; its face consisted of two blue eyes and a red “O” for a mouth. Simmons held up the dummy. “This is Mr. Bill,” he said. He opened the gate of the enclosure. The crocodile roused and made a few steps toward the gate. “Wave hello, Mr. Bill. Mr. Bill, I’m afraid I have to throw you to Old Rip, who will attack you savagely. But don’t worry. These men will save you. All they have to do is fight off Rip with their bare hands.” He heaved the dummy into the enclosure. The crocodile attacked as soon as it hit the ground.

“They’ve got to be kidding,” Carlos and I said to each other.
“You’d better get in there,” said the trainer. “Oh, no! Looks like Mr. Bill will never be a father.”

“We’re going to have to get the crocodile to let go of the dummy first,” I said to Carlos. “I have a plan. I’ve seen it work on alligators…” Pinching one nostril shut, I made a moaning sound, “MMMnnn, MMMnnn.” It’s a fair approximation of an alligator’s call. The big croc looked at me inquisitively, but held onto the dummy. I repeated the sound. Rip let go of Mr. Bill and snarled at me. Carlos rushed in and grabbed the dummy. But, as he tried to run back out, Rip caught him with a swing of the tail. Carlos threw the dummy as far as he could. I ran in to grab it, but Rip lunged for the dummy at the same time. Rip caught hold of a foot, while I wrapped my arms around the torso. I kicked Rip in the snout, while Carlos got the croc in a chokehold. “No unnecessary roughness!” Leo scolded.

After a few moments, Rip let go of Mr. Bill. The croc wasn’t done yet, though. Carlos relaxed a little when the dummy came free, and Rip positively erupted from his grasp and cut me off from the gate. I leaped over him, with the dummy over one shoulder. Just as I reached the gate, Rip caught me by the foot. I flung Mr. Bill over the finish line, just before Rip dragged me away. Fortunately, Rip was very gentle when he closed his jaws on my head. Leo tapped his pencil thoughtfully against his clipboard. “Not bad,” he said. “Apart from getting killed, I’ll give you a passing grade for effort.”

As I struggled to my feet, I saw Di outside the fence. I tried to straighten up and look strong and confident. “That was incredible!” she said. “You’re the first set of applicants to get the dummy out. Far as I can see, the jobs are yours for the taking. C’mon! I’ll take you to see Dr. Werner.”

Dianna led us across the hangar/museum to a metal stairway that led upward to a balcony. She opened one door to reveal another flight of stairs that spiraled upwards. “This was originally an air-traffic control tower,” she told me. At the top was a door with an electronic lock. She punched in a code, and the door opened. I hadn’t been sure what to expect in the control room, but the one thing I had taken for granted was that it would be a quiet place, probably manned by a few older men crouched silently over a computer screen. What I found instead was a room filled by 25 people who bustled about, talking loudly and sometimes arguing. With a ceiling fifteen feet high, the room was just big enough for the noise to produce noticeable echoes. Except for one white-haired man, none of the staff looked over 35. Even more surprisingly, most of the staff were from the Orient, predominately Indians and Japanese.

I was simultaneously dazzled and confused by the machinery. The walls were virtually lined with computer screens, which displayed either indecipherable equations and lines of computer code or weird shapes. Several showed false-color images of landscapes viewed from above. The room was dominated by a three-dimensional layered LED display, fourteen feet tall, twenty feet wide and four feet thick, that stood in the center. It had obviously been used originally by air-traffic controllers to plot the positions of planes, but now it was nearly filled by a computer-generated geometric form that looked like macaroni stretched to infinity. “What is that?” I said.

The white-haired man turned around and said: “That is the Earth, represented four-dimensionally.” He held out his hand. “I am Dr. Julius Werner. I designed the Temporal Displacement Device. I also trained this lovely young lady.” Dianna blushed. “And you must be Ted Flockman. Dr. Wrzniewski, I already know. This is only the third time that applicants have come in here, so please excuse our lack of decorum.”

“That’s fine,” I said, smiling at the implied compliment. “So, what’s this about representing the Earth in four dimensions?”

“It is a visual representation of string theory,” Werner said. “The underlying premise is that any object, at a given point in time, is only one part of a four-dimensional string, or, to use a more colorful analogy, one segment of a worm. In this case, the object being modeled is our planet as it moves through space. We call this model the Earth-Worm. What you see is only a small portion. When preparing for a temporal displacement, we plot where, and when, we want to send the expedition on the model.”

“It’s my understanding that only a part of the apparatus actually moves through time,” I said. “What does that look like, and how does it move?”

“We call the mobile part of the device the time bell, after a diving bell,” Werner explained. “Like a diving bell, it has no motive power of its own, but must instead be moved by an external agency. The time bell is very simple: a square platform, with a pole on each corner. The poles contain machinery that generates a temporal displacement field. The power, both for going to the past and coming back to the present, is produced by the anti-matter generator. The course, for lack of a better word, is programmed by us. Since there is no contact between the time bell and the rest of the device, all time travelers will have to adhere to a plan more rigid than that of a space flight. You must return to the present after a fixed amount of time. In fact, the machine will do so automatically. You must have a specific amount of mass aboard. If anything goes wrong, we will have no way to help you.”

I felt a little intimidated. “Is it dangerous?”

“Of course,” Werner said. “That is why we need the very best staff for an expedition. But rest assured, we will do everything possible to keep you safe. We will provide you with the best weapons, the best vehicles and the best supplies to accomplish your mission. We will hire paleontological consultants to instruct you on what is known about past environments, and we will use “light probes” to map where you go ahead of time. All in all, you will face less risk working for Naughtenny Moore, Ltd. than you will crossing the street.”

“Not that I’m paranoid. . .but why couldn’t you help us?” I asked. “If nothing else, couldn’t you load a rescue party aboard, and send the time bell back to when it left?”

Werner shook his head. “That’s not an option. At the present time, all displacements have an uncertainty factor of plus or minus 50 years. There’s no way we could send a time bell back to exactly when it left.”

I examined the “Earth-worm” thoughtfully. “You seem to be able to travel in space, as well as time. Could this be used for space travel, as well as time travel?”

Werner laughed. “NASA has been very interested in that possibility,” he said. “Unfortunately, again, the answer is no. We can easily go to different places on the Earth’s surface, but two problems prevent travel to other planets. One is differential velocities. This is a problem even for the Earth. Because the Earth moves in different directions during its orbit, and because its rotation rate has steadily slowed over time, the time bell invariably will undergo an instantaneous change in velocity on arrival in the past. The time bell has massive shock absorbers, but if it landed at the wrong place at the wrong time, it would be smashed like a bug on a windshield. Most of the calculations we have to make are simply to prevent that from happening. If the target were a different planet, even in our own solar system, the difficulties, and the potential for disaster, would be infinitely greater.

“The second, even more fundamental problem rises from the nature of space-time. For generations, it has been recognized that large objects distort not only space, but time. The Earth-worm is not merely a plot of the Earth’s position over time, but a representation of a four-dimensional structure created by the Earth’s passage. All “points” on this structure are interconnected. That is why time travel is possible. As long as we travel to Earth’s past, space-time works in our favor. But if we aim at a point outside the structure, space-time is against us. To reach any such point would require energy expenditures millions of times greater than what is already necessary. The chances of such a point being occupied by a planet would be infinitesimal, even with the most careful calculations. Picture trying to shoot a gnat from a million miles away. That is what it would be like to try to go to another planet in another solar system. And if you do make it, there’s still the velocity problem…”

The whole time, Carlos was gazing thoughtfully at the model. Finally he spoke, with surprising softness, “Perhaps. . .perhaps this is the face of the Earth Mother.”

I finally raised what was perhaps the most vital question. “If we travel back in time, what are the risks of changing the past?” I was grimly recalling my disastrous attempt to replay history.

“One of the two expeditions that have already gone performed an experiment to test that,” Werner said. “Ten people went, on an experimental time bell slightly bigger than a freight elevator. Dr. Gonzalez was one of them, incidentally. They went to a desolate region of Israel, in the second century C.E. Their main objective was to study the Dead Sea scrolls when they were still intact. Nothing was collected. They simply went to the caves where the scrolls had been found, took them out, photographed them and then put them back. Utmost care was taken to make no changes, except one.

“In a carefully chosen spot that had never been surveyed by archeologists, the team bored a hole 20 meters deep and 20 centimeters wide. Into this hole, they dropped an airtight plastic canister, holding a titanium plate inscribed with the names of everyone in the expedition. Then they carefully refilled the hole. While the expedition was in the past, a whole crew of construction workers searched for the canister. They found it. It is now on display in the museum.”

I glanced at Dianna. She had a somber expression. It was Carlos who spoke: “What does that prove, exactly? Since it was planted in a place no one ever looked before, you don’t know whether the past was changed. To make the test conclusive, you should have dug it up before the expedition.”

“We know it is not entirely conclusive,” Werner said. “But we did make progress. We proved that a time traveler can have a tangible effect on the present world. That had been a subject of some debate. One school of thought has held that any trip to the past would create a timeline separate from the one from which the time traveler came. That view is entirely refuted. If it were true, the canister would exist in the new timeline, but not in ours. Another view is that the universe would somehow obliterate any changes, in which case seemingly chance circumstances would have conspired to destroy the canister, or even prevent it from being planted at all. They did not, even with 2000 years to work with. Most scientists have come to the conclusion that no changes occurred. The canister was always there.

“As you say, the conclusive test would have been to dig for it before the expedition left. But that was considered potentially hazardous to make such a direct test. The universe may be flexible in areas of uncertainty, such as ground where no one has dug, but not so where we have prior experience. UNCOST has passed a measure which will prevent any similar experiments. We are now prohibited from sending expeditions to any place and time where humans exist. They also made me install this.” He pointed to a large green button on a large console in front of the 3-D display. “That is a lockout button. If pushed, it will automatically lock down the controls. It was installed against the hypothetical event of an attempted hijacking. Quite nonsensical, since the typical band of terrorists couldn’t operate this machine if we gave them an instruction manual and a tech support hotline. There would be a greater risk of a chimpanzee flying away with a space shuttle!”

Werner folded his hands. “The question I am about to ask, gentlemen, is your final test. For all intents and purposes, you have earned your jobs. The only remaining question is, knowing what you do now, do you still want them? Two men have come this far before, only to say no. How about you?”

“Hell yes!” Carlos said. Werner smiled and looked at me. Intellectually, I could see that this would be a dangerous job, perhaps the most dangerous that has ever existed. Yet, when I thought about all I had gone through, and especially when I glanced at my lovely new co-worker, I didn’t feel like there was any question at all.

I said yes.