The ability to remain objective is what separates a DTPI operative from a temporal renegade. Renegades perceive history as a malleable entity to be molded according to individual whims and passions. Such an approach is arrogant to the point of destructive. In the same way that preservationists seek to protect terrestrial environments from the deleterious effects of pollution or strive to save rare plants and animals from extinction, so the DTPI safeguards time. The operative is essential to the mission that defines the DTPI’s existence. There are occasions when he or she is called upon to engage in acts of Baseline restoration that may greatly compromise personal morality. An operative’s duty is paramount in relation to personal feelings. It must be so, because the alternative is temporal chaos, ultimately leading to the destruction of the overall Event Time Line…in short, the dissolution of history…
Kameron rejected the Doctor’s offer to sit down in the comfortable recliner situated in the middle of her office. Kameron rarely visited Dr. Win. On the few occasions he did, he never took a seat. He shunned the notion of relaxing. He wasn’t here to relax.
Dr. Alexi Win, resident psycho-analyst, observed the operative through a cool filter of professional detachment. She perched on the edge of her desk, waiting patiently for Kameron to gather whatever thoughts twirled through his head.
“I killed a man,” Kameron confessed. “I put an arrow through his head and called it a day.”
“Killing being an unpleasant but necessary aspect of your job, I assume that you accomplished your mission,” Dr. Win stated. The psycho-analyst wore the white slacks and matching collarless tunic of a medical practitioner.
Kameron replied to Win’s comment as if it were a question. “Yes I did. Another patch on the gaping wound of an Event Time Line.”
“You’ve saved another parcel of history.”
“At a cost as usual.”
“What cost?”
“Human cost.”
“Human cost? Who do you refer to when you use the term human?”
Kameron cut a sour eye at the doctor. He resented the question, because he knew the answer he provided would not accord with DTPI policy. Populations within timeframes are not human beings they are historical subjects. That was the first rule drilled into operative recruits at the beginning of their training. Perceiving historical subjects as human beings would only compromise an operative’s ability to carry out missions that required the taking of lives.
Event Time Line:1994, flittered across Kameron’s recollection. He was in a concealed location, within an airport’s line of sight, waiting for a plane to reach the end of a runway. When the plane was airborne, its wheels retracting into its metallic belly, Kameron propped the SAM launcher on his shoulder, targeted and fired. Seconds blinked by between launch and contact. The plane lurched from the missile’s explosive impact, before gliding groundward in a perilous smoke-churning descent. The resulting crash reverberated across a tiny, densely populated African nation. A president died in the plane’s demise. Up to a million Rwandans would soon join him in a gruesome orgy of machete-driven slaughter.
Temporal renegades had already prevented that tragic episode when they murdered the real individuals responsible for downing the plane. Kameron had been sent to that time frame to put history back on track.
Another Event Time Line. Kameron stood over the body of a temporal renegade whose neck he just snapped. The renegade was trying to assist Spartacus, the gladiator who led a slave revolt that terrorized the Roman Republic. With the weapons the renegade provided, Spartucus and his slave army would have won the war and eventually toppled the might of Rome. Again, Kameron disrupted a renegade network and returned the Baseline to the way it was suppose to be. Six thousand slaves with thwarted dreams of freedom were nailed to six thousand crosses for their efforts. A crowning achievement to a mission’s success. How burdensome that crown, now. How loathsome the achievement.
In the DTPI’s scheme of things, a bunch of doomed Rwandans and Roman slaves were only historical subjects. Nothing more. Their existences were secondary to the primary task of restoring events others had altered. There was a time when Kameron actually believed that. But one too many such restorations…one too many occasions of seeing the consequences of his missions measured in the blood and suffering of historical subjects…human beings.
“Kameron, you have not answered my question.” Dr. Win folded her arms, her expression mildly insistent.
“I suppose you want me to say that the only humans who count are the operatives lost in the line of duty.” Kameron’s tone teetered on sarcasm, but Win either did not notice or took no offense.
“Is that what you believe?” She asked, studying the operative closely.
“That’s what I’ve been taught to believe.”
“But have you taken that teaching to heart?”
“I wouldn’t be an operative if I hadn’t.”
“Some of the tasks you have been called to perform, however, still trouble you.”
Kameron paced to the far end of the office, his silence all but validating the psych-analyst’s suggestion.
Dr. Win dropped her arms and stood up. She had listened, now she took the opportunity to advise. “Why don’t you take a break or if that doesn’t suit you, perhaps you should put in for assignments that are less, shall we say, intensive. Assignments that do not involve violence. Either option should do you some good. You’ve been at this stressful pace continuously for a very long time. You’re becoming burned out.”
Kameron grunted. “Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe I do need a change of pace.” He let the idea sink in. “Maybe I do.”
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