Temporal Exploring 101 - First Transit

I.40 The Red Notebook

"Impossible," Mira said. "You must have misunderstood him, Cathy."

"But he as good as acknowledged that my argument based on Cartridge's rule was valid," I objected, "which implies that he knows about a theory of Temporal Physics derived more than a century later. Which in turn implies that he has to be a temporal explorer, himself."

"It is true that the man may have misunderstood Catherine's remark," Sara Jenkins observed. "But it is extremely unlikely, in view of his later statements and actions.  Therefore, I tend to agree with Catherine's conclusions, here."

I was sitting under a tree in the park that surrounded our school, alone, with the ansible before me.

My Temporal Instructor, her graduate student Mira and I were discussing  the implications of what I had learned in the course of my meeting with the man our school secretary had described as 'a ruggedly handsome devil'.

"After all, he gave up on his attempt to kidnap Natty as soon as I claimed that I knew for a fact she was going to complete a further term at St. Albert's," I added.

"On the other hand, we have scrupulously kept records of all Temporal Transits that have taken place up to this day," Sara amended. "Thus, we know for certain that nobody other than Catherine has ever been sent to this particular place and time."

"Do those records also include special missions and such?" Mira asked.

It was no secret that the Institute of Temporal Physics collaborated with the Council of the Alliance when it came to missions related to fields such as central intelligence and espionage.

"Those special missions are in the records, too, and for a good reason," my Temporal Instructor explained. "We all learned the hard way that having more than one temporal explorer in the same remote time period may yield most undesirable consequences, especially if the two temporal explorers do not know about each other's activities."

The most infamous such incident, the so-called Palmer-Kline Incident, had occurred in the early years of temporal exploring. At the time, the public interest – and therefore, the distribution of research funds - had been focused on spectacular investigations of certain events in ancient time periods that were shrouded in mystery. One such topic had been the Trojan War. Had the Trojan War actually happened, and if so, who or what had caused its outbreak? As part of the efforts, historian Nestor Kline of the Institute of Historical Studies at Edmonton had been sent to 1193 BC to mingle with the Achaeans, and Prof. Cassandra Palmer from Altwin University  had been sent to the same remote time period to do research at the city of Troy. Neither one of those two esteemed explorers had been aware of the other one's activities. After their return, a tribunal had been held to clarify what exactly had happened and who, if anybody, was to blame. In the end, historians knew a lot more about that era. However they were none too happy to learn that, in the final analysis, Cassandra Palmer and Nestor Kline, two temporal explorers from the late 22nd century, had unwittingly caused the outbreak of the Trojan War.

"So we have to accept the conclusion that this man is a temporal explorer originating from a time in our own future?" I asked.

"Yes, I am afraid that's what it comes down to," Sara agreed.

"But even in the future, they must have knowledge of the records of Temporal Transits that we keep, don't they?" Mira asked. "However, that man apparently did not know anything about Cathy and her mission."

"There are two possibilities that I can see," Sara replied. "Either, we are talking about a future where the records we so painstakingly keep have been lost or are no longer accessible, for whatever reason. Or else, the records are still there but people of the future do not care about them."