Time Transit Tech Support
I had gone back to work, and after a three day training marathon, I started my first day of tech support for "Time Transit" a company which was using a new technology to see into the past, and occasionally, when conditions were applicable, into the future. Most of the first tier calls were of a pair of issues; username and password problems, or browser not looking forward problems. I could see that I would be regularly explaining to people that while looking into the past was going to be pretty accurate (under most circumstances) it wouldn't be possible to always move into the future, particularly if knowledge of the future would likely change the outcome of current events and decisions. Oddly, this sometimes meant that a person in location "A" would not be able to see the future of location "A" while a person in location "B" who was unconnected to the events of location "A" might be able to see some, or even all of what was to happen there. This, of course, led to a somewhat rare third type of call. Something is wrong with my time viewer, can you look into the past and zoom into the future of my current location.
That trick rarely worked.
I was working from a VR rig in the isolation suite (a sort of home away from home that was supposed to keep our own effects on the future to a minimum) when I got a call of the third type. I managed to make the connection to the person's time viewer, and was able to see their past altercation with a woman, who I assumed was their girlfriend. Silly argument, really, and the gentleman was very obviously in the wrong. Suddenly, I heard a sound in my front room. It was the caller, and he threw a gun into my small bedroom and then ran out, disconnecting the call. He shouldn't have even been able to get into the isolation suite. I reconnected, but he just laughed and told me to sit tight, the police were on the way. I took off the VR rig, and noticed that my bedroom now looked like the scene I had just witnessed, and there was the body of the woman lying along side the bed, obviously dead. How had I not noticed the smell before now? I set my rig to look into the past, and there was someone, looking a lot like me, now arguing with the woman, who was blaming the "not me" for something that hadn't happened yet. I checked to make sure my recordings were uploaded to the company, and then to my own cloud backup, even though that was technically a violation of my TOS with the company. I had the feeling things were about to get very weird. It seems my call had come from the past, I'm not sure how that was even possible, but I knew, despite the visual similarity, that the perpetrator wasn't me, as I wasn't even working for the company a week ago. I called the police to report someone dead in my Isolation Suite while using the internal communications software to notify my supervisor.
That trick rarely worked.
I was working from a VR rig in the isolation suite (a sort of home away from home that was supposed to keep our own effects on the future to a minimum) when I got a call of the third type. I managed to make the connection to the person's time viewer, and was able to see their past altercation with a woman, who I assumed was their girlfriend. Silly argument, really, and the gentleman was very obviously in the wrong. Suddenly, I heard a sound in my front room. It was the caller, and he threw a gun into my small bedroom and then ran out, disconnecting the call. He shouldn't have even been able to get into the isolation suite. I reconnected, but he just laughed and told me to sit tight, the police were on the way. I took off the VR rig, and noticed that my bedroom now looked like the scene I had just witnessed, and there was the body of the woman lying along side the bed, obviously dead. How had I not noticed the smell before now? I set my rig to look into the past, and there was someone, looking a lot like me, now arguing with the woman, who was blaming the "not me" for something that hadn't happened yet. I checked to make sure my recordings were uploaded to the company, and then to my own cloud backup, even though that was technically a violation of my TOS with the company. I had the feeling things were about to get very weird. It seems my call had come from the past, I'm not sure how that was even possible, but I knew, despite the visual similarity, that the perpetrator wasn't me, as I wasn't even working for the company a week ago. I called the police to report someone dead in my Isolation Suite while using the internal communications software to notify my supervisor.
posted by Fermius Firefly | 4:31 AM
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