Temporal Exploring 101 - Deep Future

IV.11 The hearing, resumed

After a brief coffee break the hearing continued.

"Catherine, you mentioned another group of people in the 1960s who may be opposing the autarchy's operatives," the chairwoman of the committee addressed me. "Could you elaborate a bit on that?"

"Certainly. Actually, it was Ferguson who told me about them. The autarchy's agents refer to them as the Meddling Temporal Natives, or just as Meddling Natives. I may have met one of those people, myself: Granny Morgan, the grandmother of one of my classmates. The old woman acts a bit like a self-styled witch, telling fortunes and stuff like that. Though she doesn't refer to people such as herself as witches. She prefers to speak of people endowed with special talents and gifts. Claims that those gifts run in a number of families. Supposedly, only the female line of a family carries these special gifts. I am not sure what to make of it. I mean, I have witnessed my classmate Erin Morgan conduct a seance for us girls. It was ... well, kind of scary."

Councilwoman Narbit chuckled. "Sounds like an awful lot of superstition to me. Anyway, I suggest that we return to the more urgent problem of the autarchy and their objectives."

"I rather agree with your assessment, Esther," the historian observed. She turned towards the dark-haired woman whose name I had not caught when she had been introduced to me. "Yes, Irina? Do you have a question?"

"Yes, I do." Irina cleared her throat. "I understand that the main objective of the autarchy's 'Operation Fogg' was, and still is to kill Natty Fogg – that is to say, the person they assume to be the historical Natty Fogg – before she turns seventeen or eighteen. Given the fact that Fogg is basically unprotected, it seems very likely that they will eventually succeed."

"Yes, that would appear to be the most likely outcome," Berit Hempler agreed. "Which would also explain why there are no records of Fogg's academic achievements to be found in the 1970s or in the 1980s. No publications under her name in any of the major scientific journals. If she survived, you would have expected her to have had at least some moderate impact in her chosen field."

"Yes, you would," Sara observed. "That is, unless Natty Fogg got married and changed her last name when she did so, which was the usual procedure in the UK in the 20th century. In that case, she would subsequently have published under her new name."

"Nevertheless, it is not unlikely that the would-be assassins of Operation Fogg are going to kill her, if nobody prevents them from doing so," Irina insisted. "Which raises the question if we should not in some manner take measures to protect the girl."

Amit Cusk raised an eyebrow at that. "What would you suggest that should be done, specifically?"

Irina shrugged. "You tell me, Amit. You are our expert on security, here. But I imagine we could send a small contingent of Special Forces to the 1960s to take care of that."

Before Cusk got a chance to make a reply, Berit Hempler intervened. "There are at least two obstacles that prevent us from doing that, Irina. First, as Sara explained during our last meeting, prior to Catherine's successful transit there have been a number of failed attempts to send temporal explorers to the 1960s."

"Unfortunately I was kept from attending the committee's last meeting by other obligations," Irina replied. "Perhaps somebody already explained it on that occasion, but how could an attempt at a temporal transit possibly fail?"

"Oh, there are many different ways that this may happen," Sara cut in. "The most common cause is that the setup of a macroscopic Fogg-Williams bridge turns out to be impossible, due to vortices and other instabilities of the field. A possible explanation would be that the respective temporal transit is incompatible with a consistent global history. In other words, the interactions of the would-be explorer in the past would lead to some kind of paradox. In the particular case we are talking about here, we attempted to send different candidates, both before and after Catherine's transit, without success. Not limited to, but including, members of the Special Forces."