Operation Chronos

TOP SECRET

OPERATION CHRONOS

The mission: stop radical terrorist group Untime Disorganization from using time travel to create chaos across timelines. 

Good work, Agent. You and your team have successfully dismantled the Tritonic Wormhole Generator, the source of energy for our enemy’s time machine, the Tipler Cylinder. Without this source of energy, the Cylinder is useless, and the Untime Disorganization is unable to travel back in time to sow their seeds of discord, knitting together timelines and causing paradoxes here, there, and everywhen. 

Our continuum-phase detectors are showing the next 58 minutes with some clarity. After that, timelines start to split and the image becomes illegible, so we can be relatively certain that Untime will manage to restart their wormhole generator and get the Cylinder up and running within the hour. Therefore: time is, of course, of the essence. 

The next step in the mission is unfortunately one you must take on your own: retrieving information gathered by one of our double agents. Your contact has given you this dossier of information, as well as a leather briefcase which includes: a gun; two throwing knives; a tranquilizing gun; a food poison detection kit; a protein bar for sustenance; and a mini continuum-phase detector. Attached is a map of the immediate area. Please make note of Sweetcakes Bakery, Vanilla Bean Cafe, and the Time Police Station. 

Your contact will drop you off at Pigeon Point Park. Sweetcakes Bakery is a seven minute walk from there, six at a brisk pace; still enough time to admire the fresh scent of a crisp early morning, and the empty road reflecting the thin light of the cloudy dawn sky. 

Agent Mouse is the double agent who has been gathering intel on the Disorganization for the past two months or three years, depending on wrinkles in the continuum that have yet to be smoothed by our Paradox Elimination team. She will be playing the role of baker today. When you tap on the window, she’ll jump, startled by your early arrival. The bell at the top of the door will jingle as she lets you in. “Hey there, you!” she’ll greet you, “We don’t open for another half hour! But for you, I’ll make an exception.”

She’ll smile nervously, smooth the baby pink of her apron, glance at the clock on the wall. It will tick, forward in time at the rate of one second per second, just as time always does and always should. 

“I won’t bother you for long,” you’ll say, “Just after a blueberry muffin before I head off to work.” 

Agent Mouse’s nod is more of a twitch, and she scuttles off to hand you your specially prepared morning treat, inside of which lies the Disorganization's entire history, past and future. Blueprints to wormhole generators and Tipler Cylinders, lists of disruptions to the spacetime continuum and paradoxes our teams are working hard to untangle. 

A USB of Time Secrets, delivered to you in a delectable envelope. Very valuable. Will prevent migraines worth of paperwork, you understand. 

After Agent Mouse skittishly hands you the muffin, walk to the Time Police Station. You may eat the muffin. You may not eat the USB. 

But you mustn’t just devour any food items all willy-nilly. Has your training taught you nothing? Your briefcase contains a poison detection kit for a reason. The muffin smells edible, sure, but underneath the scents of buttery cake batter and sweet, tangy blueberry, you will definitely detect some subtle bitter notes. Take a seat under the awning of a nearby cafe (Vanilla Bean), and remove the testing kit from your briefcase. 

Of course, I can tell you right now that the muffin is laced with cyanide, but I only know this because I watched you on the many screens of the continuum-phase detector. It showed very clearly you, sitting at the outdoor seating of the Vanilla Bean cafe, hands clad in white latex gloves, intently watching the indicator strip change from white to bright red. Cyanide. 

You will crumble the muffin into a nearby bin. Needless to say, there was no USB after all. 

March back to the bakery, back to Agent Mouse (or rather, Agent Snake). She will shriek in horror at your hasty return, and, trembling in her frilly little apron, will desperately mash the emergency alarm under the counter. 

Sedate her. Our men will take care of her shortly. In the meantime, you need to find the USB. You have little under twenty minutes. Arm yourself with the gun. 

Behind the counter, in the darkness of the kitchen, you will spot a shadow, a figure moving stealthily. Attempt to shoot the figure all you want, but you won’t be fast enough, and your bullets will catch on sacks of flour instead. As stealthily and quietly as you can, move into the kitchen. The lightswitch will be to your left. Fluorescents will flicker to life, but the figure will move beyond your sight yet again, hidden behind clouds of flour that fall like snow. 

Your adversary will come from behind, attempting to strike the right of your neck, but you must be quicker: block with your forearm, grab her hand, immobilizing it against her body with your right. Shoot the gun. It will catch her thigh, and she’ll fall to the floor, blood running down her leg, staining the floured floor pink. 

Your arch nemesis, a handsome femme fatale and agent of chaos, former time police officer, now leader of the Untime Disorganization and most wanted by the time police. You know her as Agent Eris. 

“We have to stop meeting like this,” she will quip, smirking up as if she doesn’t have a bullet lodged firmly in her thigh. 

You do have the time to banter back. “Meeting like what?” you might say, “In this timeline, this is our first meeting.” 

“We’re not the bad guys, you know,” she’ll say. (You’re out of ammo. Toss the gun aside and arm yourself with knives while she’s talking). “Don’t you think it’s unfair that the time police hold a monopoly on time travel technology? Why do you get to decide who alters the course of history? Why does a tiny, power-hungry military operation get to write history at all?” 

Don’t listen to her. She’s a terrorist. A chaotic maniac. 

“You’re wrong,” you must say to her. “You want to spread time travel technology to the masses. Do you understand what a phenomenally bad idea that is? Do you know how many inconsistencies in the timeline that will cause? The cost of therapy for our Paradox Elimination Team makes up 84% of the time police’s budget!”

“Didn’t think you were so susceptible to propaganda, but okay.”

“Propaganda? You’re insane!”

She will lunge at you, then, a wild animal out for blood. Fight dirty. Slash her forearm before she stabs your eye. Duck before she sends an elbow crunching into your nose. Throw a hook to her ribs before she shoves you into the hot stove. Kick her, send her reeling into shelves of loaves and cakes. 

Careful: do not succumb to flights of fancy as you wrestle this close, nose to nose, breathing each other’s air. Don’t imagine what might happen if the two of you dropped this dangerous life of secrets and lies and chaos and death, if you left it all behind and started a new, normal life together. Maybe in the snowy mountains of Austria, you could live out your days in chronological order, just the two of you, no violence, no time travel conspiracies, just you and her, one day at a time.  

She will snap you out of your reverie with a knee to the groin. Pull yourself together, Agent, and kick her legs out from under her. Wrestle with her in the bloody, floury floor of the bakery kitchen. Knock her out, or sedate her, but do not kill her. 

Let’s be honest, you know you wouldn’t be able to bring yourself to kill her, anyway. You’re too attached to her, despite how much you despise each other. Be careful, Agent, one day she could be your downfall. 

Check the front left pocket of her pants, in it there should be a USB. Is it the USB, the one that contains information so many have killed for? Honestly, we have no way of knowing. The earliest we can scan it is in ninety minutes from now, and by that point the generators will be back online, and the timeline will have fractured into infinite threads. As mentioned above, it is nigh impossible to find a clear signal on the continuum-phase detectors beyond the next hour. 

So slip the USB in your briefcase, and dust the flour off your suit. Briefcase in hand, head to the station, where you will receive your next instructions. Burn this dossier after reading. Good luck, Agent.