Dedication
For my Dad
Ut aliquando futurum praesidio.
Roll Call
Time Police Personnel
Commander Marietta Hay Commander of the Time Police. Attempting to modernise. A bit of an uphill struggle.
Captain Charlie Farenden Her adjutant. An astute young man.
Major Callen Head of Recruitment and Training. A bit of an enigma.
Major Matthew Ellis Recently promoted. Tipped for the top. If he lives long enough.
Lt Gordon Grint Recently promoted. Leading his first team. A very conventional Time Police officer.
Officer Celia North Formerly from St Mary’s. Fancied a change of career.
Officer Sarah Smith A bit of a bitch. Actually, quite a lot of a bitch.
Team 236 – Team Weird
Trainee Matthew Farrell Life’s a little more complicated these days. Still reluctant to have his hair cut.
Trainee Jane Lockland Brighter than everyone thinks. Definitely brighter than she herself thinks.
Trainee Luke Parrish Unwillingly trafficked into the Time Police. Not giving it his best shot.
Team 235 – All shaping up to be nice, conventional Time Police officers
Trainee Alek Anders
Trainee Alan Hansen
Trainee Stefan Kohl
Trainee Marco Rossi
Security
Officer Songül Varma Prisoner’s Friend, but not really.
St Mary’s Personnel – Grains of sand in the Time Police Sandwiches of Life
Deputy Director Tim Peterson Reprising his Roman patriarch role. Even less successfully this time around.
Dr Lucy Maxwell Historian. Enough said.
Miss Greta Van Owen Historian. As above.
Mr Markham Security. Got his hands full. Again.
Chief Technical Officer Very pleased to see his son.
Leon Farrell
Professor Andrew Rapson Unchanged over the years.
Dr Octavius Dowson As above.
Mr Tom Bashford Drowning – but only very slowly.
Miss Felix Lingoss Hair expert.
A Brief History of the Time Wars
A long time ago in the future, the secret of time travel became available to all. Naturally, everyone wanted it and because the implications were imperfectly understood, the world nearly ended.
Old wars were fought and refought as world leaders continually pressed ‘Reset’ hoping for a more favourable outcome this time around.
New nations emerged, flickered briefly and then disappeared. The Confederate States of America, for example, arose from the wreckage of North America, was defeated, emerged again and refused all attempts to dismantle it. The subsequent long, bitter and bloody struggle so distorted the timeline that, for a dangerously long time, the Confederacy and the Union existed side by side, playing out their own histories simultaneously.
All over the world, people lived, died, then lived again.
Events happened. Then didn’t happen. Had never happened. Then happened again but differently. Some moments vital to the development of the human race never happened at all. Some happened more than once.
Everyone wanted to change the past for the better, but what was better for A was not necessarily better for B. Not surprisingly, whole new wars broke out.
Many, whose minds could not encompass the many versions of the same events, went mad. History was written and rewritten so many times that the fabric of reality began to wear thin. The world began to spiral downwards to destruction.
At the last moment, when it was almost too late, the Time Police were formed. It was an international effort. Personnel were drawn from the military, from the police, and even a few from a tiny organisation known as the Institute of Historical Research at St Mary’s Priory, situated outside Rushford in England, where they would explain, at enormous length, that they definitely didn’t do time travel – they investigated major historical events in contemporary time, and they’d been doing this for some time without anyone being any the wiser and that all of this was nothing to do with them.
A series of international laws were passed to deal with the situation. The punishment for time travel was death. Anyone caught indulging in time travel faced summary execution – together with everyone else involved. Or even those unfortunate enough to be standing nearby. No one ever bothered with a trial.
Every citizen was required to cooperate fully and completely with the Time Police. Failure to do so was death.
Armed with these powers, the Time Police set about their task of saving the world from its own stupidity.
Thus began what were known as the Time Wars. The Time Police’s remit was simple: to shut down time travel everywhere. No matter what it took – shut it down. With extreme prejudice if necessary. Just shut it down and get the situation back under control. They answered to no one. No one nation had overall control. Their reputation was fearful. Word soon got around. If the Time Police turned up, then things were not going to end well. Not for anyone within a five-mile radius, anyway.
It was bloody and brutal for a long time. A lot of people died. And not just the illegals, as they were known. The Time Police themselves paid an astronomically high price. After the first year, nearly all the original members were dead. Casualties were massive. It is doubtful whether they could have sustained these losses for very much longer but they never faltered, relentlessly pursuing their targets up and down the timeline. At one point they numbered less than thirteen officers in the whole world. No one ever knew how close the Time Police came to extinction.
Fortunately, by then, people were beginning to realise that possessing time travel is like holding a snake in your hand. If you don’t know what you’re doing, sooner or later, it will twist in your hand and bite you.
One by one, nations were induced to give it up. Many were secretly glad to see it go. They simply hadn’t wanted to be the first to surrender it. And by then, big business had discovered the past was not theirs to plunder. Their massive investment had led to no returns at all. They too lost interest.
In the shell-shocked aftermath, it was the Time Police, politically neutral, who brokered agreements, treaties and accords or, if that failed, knocked a few heads together. When done at street level, that sort of thing is known as a brawl. Do it at international level and it’s called diplomacy.
After a long while, things settled back down again but, as is always the way, those who had been the first to extol the virtues of the Time Police now began to perceive that the existence of an organisation with such wide-ranging powers might not be such a good thing after all.