I walked over to my desk and saw a file there, which was weird since I didn’t have any emails and I had just checked. The file folder was blue and had ‘For Alexandra Anderson your eyes only!’ and ‘Emergency!’ written on it.
“What?” I asked. Apparently I said it aloud because a person who I didn’t recognize and was probably new glanced up. Everyone else must have been used to me by now.
“I’m just talking to myself.” I told the new person as I sat down at my desk. They went back to their work. Emergencies were not common at the agency. Don’t get me wrong, there are always a lot of problems to deal with. . . but emergencies do not usually apply to time travel. Why would they? You have to time travel to whatever time you’re going to anyway, why would taking a few minutes, days, or even months matter? It’s not like you can be late. I was worried. And not ‘there is a hungry dinosaur charging towards me and it’s decided I’m it’s next meal’ worried. I’m talking about ‘This doesn’t make sense and is probably WAY worse than I can imagine’ worried. So I did what anyone would do; I read the file. A time traveler was continuously returning to the exact same date in the past, December 24th after sun set and going back before sunrise on the 25th. (That was kind of weird but not exactly emergency worthy.) The time traveler had done this so many times that the hours they had spent doing this added up to months. Months! That was crazy! Now I understood why this was an emergency. This time traveler was destroying the fabric of space and time! I walked to Claire’s office/fashion studio and knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” Claire’s voice sounds simultaneously extremely tired and very annoyed.
“Hey, Claire. It’s me, Alex-” I don’t even finish saying my name before she tells me to “Come in, come in!” I smile as I walk through the door into the familiar space.
“Sorry to bother you but-”
She interrupted me again. “No, no, no. You’re not bothering me at all. Now, come here and tell me what you need. Just please don’t let it be a ball gown. I was up all night hand sewing that one” she gestured to a crumpled ball gown in the corner “but, apparently it’s upper middle class not middle class!”
“How was I supposed to know there was a difference?” An equally annoyed girl (who I hadn’t realized was in the room) exclaims.
Claire glares at the girl and opens her mouth to say something. I interrupt before Claire’s even said anything.
“How about you go work on your homework.” I suggest to the girl.
“Or learn something about history.” Claire mumbles. Luckily I don’t think the girl hears her. Once the girl has left the room, I hand Claire the file and go inspect the ball gown that appeared to have been thrown unceremoniously in the corner. It was completely hand stitched and looked in between something a princess from fairy tales would wear and something that should be in a museum.
“This is really good,” I tell Claire. She glances up to see what I’m talking about.
“Should be, I stayed up all night hand sewing it. Not that it matters now, no one is going to wear it.” She sighs, then gets back to reading the report. She looks up after a minute.
“So. . . what do you need exactly?”
“I don’t really know. . .” I admit.
“If you're going to stop the time traveler you probably don’t want to blend in, since they won’t take you seriously,” Claire says.
“Does that mean you’re going to make me a uniform?” I ask hopefully. She smiles. “Yes, yes it does.”
I expected to have to look for the time traveler but they weren't even trying to blend in. A lot of identical bright red time travel ships were floating in the air. I walked over to the closest one, and I watched the ship for a few minutes waiting for the time traveler to appear. A man wearing winter clothes that were only red and white with the exception of his coal black boots walked out of a house and towards the ship. He stopped when he saw me.
"Uh, Hi?" He said.
"Is that your ship?" I ask, pointing to the nearest time travel ship.
"Yes," he looks slightly confused to see me.
"What are you doing here?" I said it a lot more confidently then I felt.
"Giving people presents." he says, "I'm almost done."
"Why do you keep repeating this night?"
"I keep coming back to finish, but it feels like the night is getting shorter than it was," the time traveler told me.
"That's because you are creating a time distortion with all your time traveling." I say.
The time traveler looks confused "Huh?" he asks. "What's a time dis-whatever you said?"
"You mean a time distortion?" I ask.
"Yeah, that." The time traveler says. (I know it's against the rules and incredibly dangerous, but in that moment I really wanted to go to the future and get the government there to do something to stop people who don't know any thing about the possible consequences, dangers or science of time travel from time traveling. Or at the very least make a law that time machines have to come with a safety guide.)
"A time distortion happens when you time travel too much, because time travel slowly destroys space and time and when that starts happening time can start to speed up or down." I explain.
"You actually expect me to believe that?" He says and starts laughing. I was very close to yelling at him.
"If time was speeding up it would affect me too." he says
"The time distortion isn't affecting us because when you time travel you stay just slightly out of the natural flow of time. It's like that so you can get out of where you are at a moment's notice."
"Who are you anyway?"
"The time travel police, we keep people like you from destroying time and space."
"What?" he asks sounding nervous. Then I remember something he just said.
"Wait, why are you giving presents to people you don't know?"
"I traveled to the future and the world gets really sad and dark. I asked someone there what happened and why everyone was sad and he said maybe if people were happier and had more hope things would have turned out different. So then I went home and thought I'm happy when I get presents, so if I give lots of people presents they will be happy, and bad stuff will never happen!" He seemed proud of his plan.
"Well, that's. . . actually really nice. But you can't keep doing this. If you do you're going to damage time so badly it can't be fixed." I tell him.
"But, if I stop all the bad stuff will happen." He protests.
"If you don't stop really bad things will happen." I say, then think of something. "What if you leave notes for the parents of the kids that you won't be able to leave gifts for and ask them to do it instead?" He thinks about it for a minute.
"Do you think that will work?" he asked.
"Yes." I say much more confidently than I felt.
"Okay," he says. "But I'm going to need your help to do it."
"I'll help as long as you promise to stop time traveling once you get home. Deal?" I ask hopefully.
"Deal." he says, and we get to work.
It was hours of really repetitive work so I'm just going to give you the short version of the steps (If you have any questions or need me to write this report in more detail just leave a note on my desk.)
The time traveler who's name is Nicholas (or might just be the name he chose to sign the notes with.) wrote the letters.
I went into the house and left the note where I thought the kids wouldn't find it and the parents would.
repeat
We did that so many times, and it took forever (not actually. The time distortion was not that bad). I should probably also mention what the note said for the official report.
I won't be able to bring presents anymore, please give your kids presents from now on on this day every year.
Nicholas.
When we were done, the time traveler Nicholas went back to his time. I came back here and was told that I now have to write official reports every time I go on a mission. Here's the report.
The end
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