You Mixed-Up Siciliano

Check, Please

Just as fast as I could from the West Texas town of El Paso,

out to the badlands of New Mexico.

-- Marty Robbins (El Paso)

=/\=

The effects of the 1980 change were not felt by Sheilagh and Rick as they sped along in the Wells. In part, that was due to them both being protected by a temporal force field, as were all of the Temporal Integrity Commission's employees, including Marisol. This made them all extratemporal so, essentially, any changes in time would not affect them personally. This was rather convenient, for what if one screwed up so royally that one's own parents were wiped from existence? At least that person would continue to exist, unchanged, and be able to correct his or her error.

Another reason they were unaffected was because they were in the process of traveling through time. The present became the future, and it receded further and further into the distant future, the more they sped into the past. Due to the Uncertainty Principle, the future was never, truly, one hundred percent guaranteed. The past was encased in concrete, but the future was one big question mark. A 1980 change could be, potentially, undone by their actions in 1960, whatever they were to be.

And, finally, they were unaffected once they crossed behind 1980, as the change, for them, became a part of the unwritten future. Marisol didn't feel the change, for the temporal transport via dose of trichronium and the Temporal Enzymatic Drive was nearly instantaneous.

As for Rick and Sheilagh, there was a quick blip on the instrument panel as they crossed from 1981 backwards to 1980 and earlier. "What was that?" she asked.

"Hmm, I dunno. Let's perform a Level One diagnostic once we've gotten in," They were in the solar system, cloaked, and moving from the orbit of Saturn to the Jovian orbit when it happened.

"Do you think maybe the instruments are more sensitive because of the upgrades the engineers did?"

"Maybe," he allowed. "I don't think they were, officially, upgrading anything. Ah, there's the pre-terraformed Mars."

"It doesn't look like home at all."

"Titan didn't look too inviting, either. Okay, here, let's get to the other side of the moon. Ah, good. I can run the diagnostic."

"Okay," she replied.

"Huh, there was a slight power surge," he said after a few minutes. "I bet that was it."

"So, there's nothing to worry about?"

"Probably not. It's May twenty-ninth, 1960. Looks to be, uh, seven PM in Rome. Care for some dinner?"

"All right," she said, "You'd better put the tie on."

"I will."

She disappeared into the little bathroom on the Wells and emerged a few minutes later, hair tousled just so and makeup refreshed. "Ready."

He looked up and down quickly; trying to be surreptitious about what he was really doing, which was checking her out. It was going to be a good vacation, he could tell.

=/\=

"I believe I've found it," Deirdre said.

"And?" Carmen asked. They had all stayed in Conference Room six in order to try to figure out where the temporal changes had occurred.

"Otra, you were right – I think – about it being less than two hundred years before the launch of the NX-01," Deirdre said, "It's December eighth, 1980."