"Are you here to replace me?" Carthage Meyer said to Andrea as she walked into the secure unit.
Meyer wore the same Intern uniform that Andrea did. Despite the similar white uniforms, the two were quite opposite in looks. Meyer was tall. He would have been slender, had he not been very soft and flabby from lack of physical activity. He had light skin, almond eyes and golden hair. Andrea felt shocked, not sure how to react after the exultant way he articulated the question.
"Umm, I don't think so... I was just told to come down here and learn everything I could."
"Too bad," Meyer said, still pleased to have a guest. "When I saw you walk in, I thought you might be my relief so I could move on to another job. I've been working back here for the last two years! I keep hoping I'll be promoted to Supervisor any day now."
The older intern was rambling, but Andrea didn't feel comfortable enough to stop him.
"Hey! Perhaps you are my relief! I bet they want me to train you to take over for me. I will be getting a blue uniform soon enough! Oh Traxor, that has to be it!" Carthage Meyer said.
"Yeah, I guess so," Andrea agreed, glancing around. "You have been working down here alone for two years?"
"Just about... And it's not 'down here.' We are not any lower in elevation or noticeably south of the observation room. 'Back here,' would be more appropriate when relating our position. Sorry, poor directional word choices are my thing. I feel it's best to educate the ill informed so that we all don't get confused."
Without a pause, Meyer jumped right back into his line of thought. "I mean, Supervisors come back here to a secure unit to work as well, but I'm kind of the unofficial Intern assigned to this area. Everyone comes to me if they need something in particular. But soon, that is going to be you! Oh, this will be great. We are going to have heaps of fun teaching you how this place works!"
"Yeah, that sounds good," Andrea said. "I am here to learn all I can."
"Gumption! Let's get started then! What is your name anyway?"
"Andrea Woodbridge. I just graduated three weeks ago."
"Three weeks and you are already getting into the sensitive stuff? That's amazing. You must have scored really well on your psych test," Meyer said.
"I have no idea how I did on it. I requested to work in timeline preservation. They selected you because of your psych test?" Andrea said.
"Yeah, that is how they decide. At least that's what I thought!" Meyer exclaimed as he waved his hands about. "I was told they choose Interns who had the right psychological makeup to work in this department. But all you had to do was ask? Unexpected..."
Andrea shrugged, "so what is this place? 'Secure unit' is quite vague. What are they keeping back here?"
Meyer grinned. "You were sent back here to learn? You are about to learn more than you bargained for!"
The fluffy Intern bounced like a beach ball as he led the way into the depths of the secure unit. Meyer showed off the stacks of closet-like containers that held a plethora of clothing and war uniforms from across various time periods. The collection was extensive. Articles of clothing were at various stages of wear and breakdown.
Andrea put her nose close to a tattered military cloak and found it had a neutral smell, not the way its dirty outward appearance suggested. Meyer closed up the container and moved on.
Deeper into the unit, a frosted glass door slid open for his passage into another room. The same shock of discovery felt Andrea as she walking into the Enforcer habitat.
The vertical space amazed her. The interior of the department's main areas maintained a standard single-story feel. But in the deceiving back areas, constructed with a hundred feet of headspace, Andrea felt as if she was in another building. She gazed up at the stacks of cells, like books on a library wall.
Many were empty, but others were occupied... bodies suspended in blue, back-lit fluid.
"A secure unit for humans?" Andrea breathed.
"Speechless, huh? I was too when I first came in here," Meyer said. "Who would think that a private entity, one that offers time tourism and runs a university focusing on the study of time travel, would have their own prison? The government doesn’t even have prisons anymore!"
"Then, why? Why is there a prison hidden back here?" Andrea said, strolling forward.
Meyer smiled, enjoying that he was the one to get to reveal the secret to the new girl. He showed Andrea to a moving pad at the base of the stacks. He stood on one and began a tour.
Meyer and Andrea were lifted from the floor and began moving along the front of the cells, interior lights came on, giving Andrea a chance to see who was being held.
"Well, the first thing you need to do... Don't think of this as a 'prison' in the historical sense. Consider it more as a collection. You see, over the history of our operation as Keepers of time, missions into the past have resulted in the necessity to bring back individuals and keep them for various reasons. So this place was built to hold them, in suspended animation."
"What sort of reasons would we have to bring anyone from the past, to the present?" Andrea asked, still trying to wrap her mind around the frozen bodies. Some of the names accompanying the suspended bodies she recognized.
"Well, take this man for example," Meyer said, pointing to the cell Andrea stood beside. "He was an important leader in the past. He shaped history. A bloody war was fought because of his actions and ideas. Mountains of books were written on him; his personal history, psychological motivations, medical problems, all sorts of rumors and speculation. How best can a temporal historian cut through all the legend and get to the truth? We pick him up and find out first hand. He ended up killing himself at the end of the war, so we just stepped in right before and replaced his body with a flash clone."
"Truly? This is what this department does?"
"Yes. It may be appalling at first, but it is the best way to understand history. We can take a man before he dies and replace his body so that the timeline has not been interrupted. We arrest the death process with our advanced medicine, and learn a treasure trove of information. The timeline is preserved and we are doing a great service to humanity." Meyer said triumphantly.
Andrea froze for a moment, unsure of a reply, or how she felt about the process. She had just been let in on a huge secret, one that she had not even began to comprehend the consequences. She thought her reaction was surly being gauged. She had been questioned about her feelings on the use of a paradoxal species, and as a result been given more. If she wanted to learn more...
"That is amazing," she finally said.
Andrea developed a suspicion that Meyer was a bit more talkative than he needed to be. Was he given instructions on how to greet the new Intern? She paused a moment, then added, "With our ability to analyze genetic makeup, we can learn so much about what makes a man become a megalomaniac."
"Exactly!" Meyer said.
"Who else is here? I don't recognize a majority of the samples," Andrea said. She made sure to use the identifying noun in a way that would be agreeable with the spirit of imprisonment. If she was to truly convince the rest of the department that she had no reservations - proper word usage was key.
"Well, some others are minor characters few have heard of, many from the deep past. There are a few here that are unauthorized travelers..."
"What? Unauthorized?"
"Yeah, unauthorized, if you can believe it. Take this guy for example," Meyer said, pointing to the unnamed youth in an approaching cell. "This kid was snared in a time trap about a year before I started interning here. I heard he was in possession of a stolen coin."
"How can someone steal a tourist coin?" Andrea asked, totally confused. "That sounds impossible. If someone stole a coin, we would just go back to before it was stolen and stop the thief..."
"You would think, huh? But I guess it has been done. I heard a rumor about some guy a long time ago that stole a bunch of coins and got away with it. So far, only one has been recovered..."
"So this boy her
e is not the thief? Did they find out what time he came from and why he had the device?" Andrea probed.
"I have no idea, it was before my time," Meyer answered. "But I would guess they didn't find out much from him since he is in here. We were not able to go back to his time and take the coin before he could walk into our trap. Other types of unauthorized travelers we have captured have been scientists that have made incomplete or crude time manipulation devices. There have been a couple instances of people that have just appeared out of their time with no explanation. In some situations, people like that end up here too."
Andrea nodded and was about to ask another question about the unauthorized traveler, but Meyer went on with his tour.
"That is not even the strangest thing that I have seen here," he said, lowering his voice. "Even more bizarre than unauthorized travelers are what the Managers call transients. I have only heard them discussed in passing, but apparently, in the travels to the past, Keepers have come across individuals that are apparently from outside our reality. That is where the really interesting stuff happens. I heard that the Mistress handles that stuff herself. It's that sensitive."
A shutter shot up Andrea's spine, and she hurriedly changed the subject.
"You mentioned flash cloning?" She said, shaking off a shiver.
"Oh, yeah," Meyer replied brightly.
He ordered an end to the tour and led the way out of the prison room. "We have a flash cloner that takes genetic material, growing a full clone to any desired age. It's quite advanced - it even works with animals and other non-human DNA. Here is where we keep the machine."
The room they entered was small; more the size of a closet compared to the other rooms Andrea had been given access to. On the back wall was the machinery, a user accessible holographic interface. Below this was a clear drawer. The main fixture in the room was a circular enclosure behind rounded glass. The place the clones would be constituted reminded Andrea of the shower in a home she used to have.
"So after you put the genetic material to be used into the receiving drawer, the chamber fills with fluid and the flash clone is grown," Meyer explained. "I have watched it done once, and it is kind of shocking. After you see a flash clone grown once, you get your fill of watching the process. Now, when we use the chamber, I turn around and wait the couple minutes facing the other way."
"Wow. I knew about cloning, but I had never seen a flash cloner. This is all lot of new information to take in." Andrea said.
"It is, it is," Meyer agreed. "Well, I will stop overloading your mind now. Come this way, I'll show you my daily duties, the procedure for item storage..."
CHAPTER 18