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Ever wonder how the Time Repair Agency came into being? Well, wonder no more...

History of the Time Repair Agency

In the year 2184 an American team of Archeologists discovered a secret room underneath the Great Pyramid of Egypt.

Within this room was a large, strange-looking cylindrical chamber which glowed eerily. Along one wall of the room was an object that vaguely resembled a control console from an old Sci-Fi TV show. The chamber and the object, along with several lines of what appeared to be fiber-optic tubing connecting the two, were painstakingly removed and transported to a top-secret research facility for study.

After many, many years of intense study, the true function of the chamber was discovered:  Time Travel.

With the early 22^nd century invention of the transforometer and transforometer physics, creating a duplicate of the Time Chamber, as it came to be known, and its control and support systems, became possible. After many difficult and trying years - and numerous failures - the Time Chamber became a reality. The applications are staggering. A whole new form of tourism came into being. For a considerable fee, a “Time Tourist” could go back in time and witness historical events first hand.

Holding to the theory that the past could not be changed, no one paid much attention to the non-interference clause in the contract that everyone was required to sign prior to departure.

Suddenly, without warning, tourists returning to the present found an entirely different world than the one they had left. As they stepped out of the Time Chamber, they were immediately apprehended by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army. Apprehended, interrogated, and imprisoned. They where shipped off to Ellis Island, where an even greater shock awaited them. As they flew over New York Harbor, the prisoners were stunned into silence. For rising from its base on Liberty Island was not their beloved Statue of Liberty, but a grotesque statue of Mao Tse-Tung.

What had happened? Someone had gone back in time to 1943 and somehow prevented the creation of the atomic bomb. As a result, Japan went on to conquer the world.

Many years went by. Those who remembered the true history of the world began to get together and plan how to return to 1945 and set history straight. Revolution occurred. Many people died, entire families wiped from existence. Eventually, “The Few” as the revolutionaries called themselves, managed to gain control of a Time Chamber. A small team of former elite Special Forces returned to 1945 and prevented the lone assassin from sabotaging the Manhattan Project, thereby restoring the timeline. Those who died during the revolution were mourned and remembered only by “The Few”.

In every revolution, heroes are born. A former NASA
scientist by the name of Andy Looney became the hero of the revolution that
never happened, for he did not return from the past empty-handed. He had
brought back artifacts which, when studied by the same team of scientists and
engineers who had studied and re-created the original Time Chamber, offered
incontrovertible proof that the timeline had indeed been altered and somehow
miraculously restored.

Numerous high-level meetings with top government officials followed with many debates, more often heated than not, about how to prevent any more changes to the timeline. An immediate ban on all time travel was strictly enforced.

With the exception of the prototype, all Time Chambers were shut down. Key components, without which the Time Chambers could not function, were removed and stored in top secret, highly guarded government vaults at undisclosed locations.

But that wasn’t enough. How did anyone know if and when the timeline was altered?

When the original timeline had been altered, the only people who knew about the alteration were those who were in the past when the timeline skewed. “The Few” were located and brought in for detailed study. Some were outfitted with extremely sophisticated sensor arrays and recording devices, then sent on several trips through time.

When the sensor data was analyzed it was discovered that the travelers where surrounded by a cocoon made up of as-yet-unidentified particles. These particles where analyzed further and eventually a device was created that could generate and control them. The “chronomagnetic” cocoon could only be made large enough to surround a small building. Attempts made to overlap two cocoons resulted in the destruction of an entire lab and the unfortunate deaths of all those within the lab when the two cocoons canceled each other out violently.

Back to square one.

After many more meetings, it was decided that a special agency, answering only to the Department of Justice, would be formed to monitor the timeline and repair any alterations. This agency would be housed in a recently completed, self-sustaining building that would be protected by a cocoon and manned by former military and law enforcement personnel. A director was appointed and the Time Repair Agency was born.

(this is just a short story I wrote during some downtime at work - no copyright infringement is intended)