Danielle, Kenji and Derrick drove in Derrick's club cab pickup, to the abandoned mill site. As with most everywhere in Ocean Falls, there was an atmosphere of a ghost town hanging around the abandoned facility. But at least here there were half a dozen parked vehicles and some smoke coming out of the crumbling chimneys. An unusually tall Asian woman, greeted the three of them at the main entrance of the building. "Well done Derrick! The whole team is here to meet Danielle! Come on in! Welcome back Kenji, and pleased to meet you Danielle. I am Mei Li!" said the lady, holding out her hand eagerly.

  "I am happy to meet you too," replied Danielle, shaking Mei Li's hand.

  Mei Li led them inside and through the industrial building. Many of the original wood saws and planing machines had been removed, and in their place were an assortment of metal fabrication machines and electrical workshops. It definitely looked like a busy place. In the back of the structure was a meeting room, large enough for two dozen people, equipped with rather spartan tables and chairs. One end of the room was filled with filing cabinets and shelves containing binders of various colours. A kitchen stood off to the side.

  Inside the room were six men and two women of mixed race, and a range of ages. One of the older men had his back to Danielle, and he looked familiar, but when he turned Danielle was genuinely shocked to see John Teator, her old trainer!

  "Danielle! I am so glad to see you!" exclaimed the fellow time traveller. He walked up eagerly, and Danielle was happy to receive his warm hug.

  "John! I absolutely never would have expected to see you here," gushed Danielle. She was genuinely shocked by the sight of Agent Teator. If anyone that she had met along the way, in her experiences as a time technician, was guaranteed to be loyal to the Arachnid faction, it would be John Teator. In Danielle's eyes, John had seemed established and comfortable in his profession. Her image of the man was that he was nearing retirement, and that retirement would be a good one: Nice house, lovely wife, and both of them in good health. Danielle was confused. "What happened? Why are you here?"

  John's face immediately turned ashen and deadly serious. "Arachnid took Cassandra from me, Danielle." His tone was grave, and the others in the room, looked towards the floor. "I came back from my very last mission. We were going to retire together, and she was gone." Tears were coming to his eyes, and he was shaking his head. "That bastard Arachnid offered me a compensation payment! He thought that he could just buy me off! God dammit to hell anyway! I was blind to all the evil acts of the Arachnid AI, until it happened to me. Now, I have lost the love of my life and I won't rest until Arachnid goes down in flames. That's why I am here, Danielle."

  Two of the others walked up and patted John on the back, in an attempt to comfort him.

  "Oh my God, John!" Danielle had heard similar stories, and worried that such a thing might happen to someone who she loved, and having known Cassandra, this news was unbelievably disturbing. "Did you look for her? How could she just be gone?"

  "I checked. Apparently, something that I did on my last mission in 1981, changed history. In my memory we met in 1991, in Las Vegas, and got married in 1994. But when I got home, and checked social media, I couldn't even find a Cassandra with her maiden name. I looked and looked through every Cassandra, and nobody matched up. Her parents have passed, but I was able to contact her sister. She claimed not to know me, but told me that Cassandra had met and married a guy from South Africa 40 years ago! That's where she lives now. My house was all set up for me to live like a bachelor. It was as if she had never been there at all." Telling his story was obviously very difficult for John.

  "I am so sorry, John." Danielle did her best to comfort the distraught man.

  Eventually, the emotions passed and the group took their seats at the meeting table. John's story had added gravity to the importance of their discussion.

  Mei Li took the lead in the meeting and introduced everyone at the table, who Danielle did not yet know: Leonard Olson, Arachnid level 3 time technician, based in New York City. Beverly Andrus, Arachnid level two time technician, based in Vancouver. William Baines, Arachnid time mission support analyst, based in Detroit. Heather Armstrong, Arachnid level two time technician based in Dallas. Jian Li, Mei's husband, and Mei herself were both Dragon faction level two technicians. Reginald Laver, Serpent faction, level 1 time technician. Jamari Abebe, Tiger faction, level 3 time technician.

  Mei Li began the discussion, "We are very glad to have you with us, Danielle. As you may have already heard, we are looking for a time agent with very special qualifications, who is willing to undertake our mission against the AIs. Agent Teator has informed us of your successful missions in the Las Vegas and Los Angeles regions, and even though it represents just two actions, we are of the opinion that you possess the skill set required," explained Mei. "Now, we are fully aware that you have not committed to anything yet, but I would like to present to you our ideas for this action, and some of the rationale behind them. Are you okay with that?"

  "Yes," replied Danielle. "I would very much like to learn more about this."

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  "Reggie," said Mei, "Could you give us a brief summary of what we are doing here?"

  "Yes ma'am," replied the middle aged intense man from Australia. "Danielle, everyone in this room has their own reasons for being part of this project. You just heard John's situation," explained Reginald Laver. "There are hundreds of stories like that, which we have collected from agents. All of us have come to believe that the problem at the heart of the matter, is the existence of time travel technology. Manipulating the course of history cannot end well. Some of us began this resistance with the idea that we might be able to educate the public, or maybe influence politicians in some way, to steer towards a more positive form of time travel control, but that truly seems impossible. The AIs resist and manipulate at every turn, and undo anything we manage to achieve in the public sphere. AI influence is limited in 2027, but one thing the factions have access to is money, especially when it comes to Arachnid. The AIs have money, and we don't. That is the first point that I want to get across to you."

  "However," continued Reginald, "Other than the money situation, we actually have several advantages over the AIs. The factions have to recruit, hire and pay their people, then expend outrageous amounts of energy, just to accomplish the simplest task. They have to tend four centuries of ever changing time lines. Even though the processing capacity of those future computer systems are enormous, they are still finite. On the other hand, our resistance works in the, here and now, and we are preparing a single mission, designed to accomplish one goal."

  "What is that goal?" asked Danielle. "And how do you propose to accomplish it? How are you going to end time travel? How are you going to do damage to machines that exist 400 years from now?"

  "Our understanding of the impact of time manipulations comes from thousands of interviews and interactions with time agents. All of us have met agents, heard their stories, and we have compiled a library of this information," explained Reginald, waving his right arm towards the shelves of binders and file cabinets. "Eventually, we came to understand that the time missions are designed with only one thing in mind: Producing the largest possible energy source for future computer based Artificial Intelligence. The humans are only tolerated to facilitate the goal of feeding the beasts. And the beasts are the AIs. But, they have a weak spot! About thirty years from now a young German physicist named Max Rudolf is going to conduct an experiment that will determine the course of history. His experiment will make time travel possible." At that point Reginald turned towards the African man. "Jamari, could you please get the Rudolf files for me?"

  Danielle interjected, "So you are planning to kill this guy, Rudolf?"

  "Oh, No! Nothing like that, Danielle. That wouldn't accomplish anything! Someone else would just conduct the experiment, and we would be right back in the same situation, maybe with slightly different AI bosses. The AI factions are masters of undercutting each other and going back a little earlier, or a little later, to reverse the effects of a time manipulation. The mission that we are proposing is to convince Professor Rudolf to modify his experiment in a way that removes the possibility of time travel from all of Earth's history." He paused to let the idea sink in, and received the file folder from Jamari, then added, "Here, have a look at these articles."

  Danielle looked at the documents being spread onto the top of the wooden table. They appeared to be printouts of study papers, and science journal articles. There were also a few local newspaper articles, complete with some photographs of the man. Professor Rudolf was tall, bearded, and substantially good looking. At least to Danielle's eyes. Scanning over the paperwork, Danielle could see that Max Rudolf was about 35 or 40 years of age, and worked at the CERN, serving as a professor at the University of Geneva. Most of his work had to do with particle physics. Remarkably, the articles she was looking at were dated from 2051 to 2057, and the photos were from 2055 to 2057. A quick calculation in her mind led to an uncomfortable response: "So this guy is like, 5 years old right now."

  Everybody around the table nodded in agreement.

  "Yes," replied Reginald. "What needs to happen is simple. But believe me when I say that the acquisition of this information was anything but simple. The research facility CERN, will build the world's most powerful particle accelerator over the next 30 years, the Future Circular Collider. It is in the planning stages right now. When the first full power experiment takes place, Professor Rudolf will be there to detect a brand new subatomic particle. In fact, his experiment detects these particles, a variant of the tachyon, tachyon delta, four days before they are emitted by the accelerator. We are not sure if he will be aware of the implications of this detection, but we are certain that this event precipitates the existence of particles able to travel backwards in time. Many years later, probably centuries, these particles are used to create the first time machines. What happens is this: The perfect symmetry of the CERN Circular Collider ring creates the first versions of these particles to ever exist, at least in our section of the universe. Rudolf's detector breaks the symmetry, causing the first tachyon delta particles to 'choose' to travel backward in time. That 'choice' is a permanent one, and will apply to all Tachyon D particles in our section of the universe. However, if he simply waits until after the acceleration ring's first full power run, and then deploys the detector, the symmetry will be permanently broken in the forward time direction. Forward travelling tachyon delta particles cannot be used to make a time machine. Ergo, the technology will never exist."

  "My job would be to convince him to wait four days to conduct his experiment," commented Danielle.

  "There is quite a bit more to it, of course. But, yes, that will be the goal," replied Reginald.

  "How sure of all this can you be? How can you know what this guy will do in 30 years? Do you have a copy of the scientific paper that he will write?" asked Danielle.

  "He will never write the paper, Danielle. Two weeks after conducting the experiment he will be murdered in his apartment. Here is the newspaper article from Geneva, Le News."

  "The AIs need him to live until the day he conducts the experiment, and maybe a few days later, but then they kill him," observed Danielle.

  "So it seems, Danielle," replied Reginald.

  "It seems to me that this guy might want to know that information," observed Danielle.

  "

  "