The Concept of Volatile Time

Part One: Urd "What Once Was"

In 1998, a man by the name of Darwin Alver created an institute to research and manipulate time travel. Alone with his studies in the beginning, he gradually erected a facility from the ground that bent time and space like a psychic's spoon. An auxiliary of scientists, philosophers, and astrologers worked together during a three year period to tear a hole in the fragile place we hold relative reality. Over the next fourteen years, they would come to stabilize the wormhole to maintain human interaction and travel.

It was based in Washington DC, in the middle of the city, across from a subway stop. A sleek steel building stood juxtaposed between a laundromat and a slow-moving Arby's. The building itself was less degenerate on the outside, mirroring its spotless and efficient record, which was built up on stable and responsible research. It was the comic book villain's worst nightmare: responsible, respected, dignified, and debonair. Above a flat, blue monaco awning was the following acronym: NORN. National Organization Researching chronological Neolith.

The business grew, until there were almost a dozen researchers, and twenty-three apprentices training to be time agents. The agents were capable people that jumped rope with the timeline. They were trained since they were children, growing up around the increasing knowledge of time travel and theories of stable, paradox, and multiverse universes. The recruitments began in 2002: kids who showed promise academically or physically, kids who had a knack for science, prodigies. They couldn't accept many; if they were spread too thin, things would get out of hand. This was a smart business. This particular organization would have no follies, not a single scratch until a good intention went wrong in 2015. This particular organization knew its limits and dared to stretch them anyway.

...

"Haru, would you hurry up?" Amara Valentine was nervous, something she was used to. To be fair, she was normally worried about a test or her bra strap showing, not about finalizing a document 63 years before she was born. Calm down, she told herself, it's been weeks since you had a panic attack; you're fine. Calm down.

"It is 1929. If I 'hurry up' I'll break America or something." Amara watched Haruki Ito write faster, faster, faster, a ballpoint pen scribbling dark ink in the margins of a uniformly typed document. She looked over his shoulder impatiently. A tinny recording of Singing in the Rain rattled from a radio on the desk where they were standing.

What a glorious feeling- it cut off abruptly as Amara reached over and snapped the antenna with one tense and fluid motion. The door rattled, and a male voice spoke from behind its wooden paneling. "Guys, hurry up, the Chronoman is almost ready!"

A girl's melodic voice shouted from the same direction, "It has been three years, Dan, learn to pronounce it correctly!"

"English isn't even your first language!" Dan retorted, cracking the door open and waltzing in, one hand holding what looked like a highlighter and the other wrapped around a small, buzzing machine shaped like a Rubik's cube.The girl followed.

"I speak it better than you," she said. She looked maybe fourteen, fifteen, with blonde hair braided over her shoulder and eyes like one of Picasso's works.

Dan, in sharp contrast, was dark and tall. Medium length brown hair covered his forehead, a couple more inches and it would cover the eyes that scared most people off. His eyes were carmine, like a London phone booth, and as intense as a hurricane. With his job as a 'time traveler,' people in the 18 and 19th centuries often went full exorcist on him if they got a good look. He'd started wearing sunglasses since an incident in 1980's Soho. Amara rolled her eyes, jamming her hands in her pockets to stop from wringing her wrists.