Shifting Gears

Codenames And Sarcasm

I stared at him, dumbfounded. "Say What?"

Tobias grinned so widely I worried his face would split in two. "Wait, so you're asking us to join a top secret, time traveling agency? Count me in!" 

I didn't share his enthusiasm."Or you could, I don't know, let us go home?",

The timekeeper looked at me. " I'm sorry, young lady. We can erase your memories, or you can join the Agency."

"But what about our families?"

"Regrettably, you cannot return to your mundane little lives. You must not be allowed to reveal that the agency had exists."

"You can't do that! People don't just up and disappear!"

"Unfortunately, miss, yes they do. There are thousands of unsolved missing persons cases every year, in your country alone."

I slumped. "So our only choice is to become a vegetable or join a vaguely threatening organization?"

" Pretty much. Now, since it was Mei and Damien's fault you're here in the first place, you are going to be in their Unit.".

Damien looked fine with this. Mei, on the other hand, looked like someone had handed her a horned toad and told her to kiss it. He gazed at our abductors, particularly Mei.

"It's your mistake and you must take responsibility for it. Remember, one more strike and you're out. Take them and get them prepped for agent status." He turned around in his chair and disappeared from view.

Mei and Damien led us back down the featureless white hallway. Tobias was bouncing around like a four year old who'd just eaten bag of sugar and drank a gallon of black coffee.

"Can I get a chair like his? Do I get a codename? What do use to time travel? Is it a TARDIS? Or that car from Back to the Future? How does it work? Have you been to the future? Or the past? I bet you're from the future! What year?"

Damien was not overwhelmed by the torrent of questions. "No, yes, I don't know really, no, nope, I have no idea how it works,  you'll have to ask Archive, yes, to both, well, to me, you're from the past, and the year 3021."

"Cool! Have flying cars been invented yet?" Damian snorted. "Flying cars went obsolete nearly one hundred years ago. We use what I guess you'd call teleporters now."

Tobias was even more enamored with this new information, and I half listened to their conversation as we walked down the hall.

We entered a large, circular room, white like the rest of the compound. In it was one desk, with a lone man sitting at it, typing voraciously at a comically large computer. Damian smiled and put a finger up to his lips. He snuck around to the back of the man and jabbed his fingers sharply into his sides. 

The guy yelped like a kicked puppy and shot three feet in the air. Then he turned around.

"Dami! I told you not to do that!" I Snorted.

"Dami?" The newly christened 'Dami' reddened. "I told you not to tell anyone about that nickname!"

The guy nodded once in satisfaction. "And I told you not to taser me. Fair's fair."

He spun once in his chair. "So, what's up?" Dami pouted. "Can't a guy just come and visit an old friend?"

Mei, stoically standing off to the side, snorted. Apparently, she can show emotion. 

"No. Every time I see you, you want something from me."

Damien shrugged. "Fine. We got a couple of new recruits. They need codenames."