The Descendant
A short story, by Erik Engström, 2025-09-17
A couple of pigeons were strutting around
on the ground as a cool breeze swept across the plaza. It was early spring when
I decided to have my coffee outdoors for the first time this year.
One of the birds stood out against the
others, it was white and slightly spotted. They were living in the moment,
scouring for crumbles that had been left on the ground from earlier guests.
After a while they took off flying towards
another part of the city, and I was once again alone with myself and my
thoughts.
Glancing at my wristwatch, I knew it was
time, they would be here any minute so I took my cup and
As expected, and as they usually are, they
were on time. Temporal agents were coming through the door and gracefully
coming over to my corner where they sat down, face to face with me. Apart from
their wildly different clothes, they all shared the same face. My face. Or
maybe I carried their face.
When you work for The Time Council you are sometimes
provided a new identity. Instead of looking like a nobody, they make you look
like everybody. Should one agent be caught, then the opposition would simply
think that they have captured the only agent. Perhaps they would even dismiss
the person as a regular time traveler as there would be photos of the same
person in multiple points in time.
One of them handed me a letter addressed to
Ramel Loveworth, which read:
“Mr. Loveworth, you have been permanently
dismissed from the Council for interfering with the timeline. As an agent you
are there to observe and not be observed. Your actions have costed us greatly. The
rules are clear and despite this you intervened. Hand in your device to agent
Sidney Bardlet and continue your civilian days in time alone from this point onwards.”
I stared at the paper, deep down I knew
that I had broken the rules but even now I was also convinced that I did the
right thing. Countless lives had been saved from a terrible fate no one knew
about now. A brief moment followed and I removed the wristwatch and put it in
the outstretched hand of agent Bardlet.
Without a word they got up and left as proudly
as they had entered, leaving me alone in the corner again. My eyes drifted to
my wrist, realizing what it all had costed me.
As we had been to every point in the past
and the future, we also developed a near perfect understanding of cause and
effect. What people sometimes attributed to random occurrences or accidents we always
knew how to trace back to the source.
What is difficult with having access to any
point in the timeline is not that you don't know what to change, because you
will not run out of such things.
It is knowing that you are able to but shouldn't change it, and now I know the price for doing so.