A Delay in Action

"What, seriously? Did you just suggest that I just get up and leave now?" Joe was concerned. He wanted to leave Utah quickly as well, along with every other non-Mormon that has found themselves within the confines of such a useless state. He could probably get away with his arm in a sling but until a doctor arrived his internals were a mystery.

"Well, I guess we can't go get them now, I'm just impatient is all. I'm done with this place."

"Me too, I guess we'll see what the doctor has to say. I did have a story I've been working on."

"Do tell sir."

Lennox knew what he had to do. It's the only mission he knew. A great disaster occurred some time in the past, a disaster that impacted the world over, modifying the landscape into what amounted to uninhabitable gray goo. Now the last remnants of humanity assembled together to prevent "The Great Collapse" as it was referred to from ever occurring.

He understood the concepts of time, of how to interact with the past and step by step, movement by movement what he had to do.

A target was set. By that point in his life it was mere method, his body moving in the recitation that only decades could produce. The device he would traverse in was small, a compartment that was acceptable by animal standards but to a male over six feet tall, it was less than accommodating. It worked simply enough by their standards. As a child they would demonstrate to him by folding a piece of paper in half, then punching hole in it. The fastest way to travel between two points is in fact to make them the same point.

Lennox was curious as a child, wondering why they bothered with science after what it had produced. As far as he had known, the replicating nanites, the backbone of their culture had developed a colloquialism known as cancer. Apparently at one time the human body would randomly be inflicted with an unnatural spontaneous growth of cells, a process that could affect anyone, anywhere at any time.

"What a horrid thought." Lennox spoke aloud, echoing his adolescence, not realizing he had an audience.

"Are you ready Mr. Barrows?"

"Like I was born to do this."

The issue of coming back was far more arduous. After completing his mission, Lennox was to visit a small Swiss company that was in the process of developing a stasis program, technology that would in essence negate all natural forces, including time in a small space. By that time they had reached phase three testing and through the passing of some controversial laws, human testing was accepted.

The company was chose for two reasons. First and foremost, the location was optimal at offering him camouflage. He would be there a very long time and any attention would be unwanted attention. the second reason required a little faith from Lennox. The historical engineers cited that particular site as one that succumbed to a natural disaster that destroyed the surface, but left the sub-level intact, perfectly preserving him and about a dozen others. The gray goo had receded in that area as well, allowing excavators easier access.

Lennox stepped into the facility with confidence. It's what he was bred for, the reason for his very existence. The process was easy. He arrived in a dressing room where a man of the same relative size as Lennox had just stepped in pursuit of a vest to match the sports coat and pants he had just tried on. His return created nothing but a scratch of the head and a secondary trip to the front. Thirty two steps to a side exit followed by another hundred and thirty, keeping with the pedestrian walkway. He did not make eye contact and seemed to slip from the minds of fellow pedestrians his shoeless status not withstanding.

The target was a male, mid 30's of Moroccan decent. At that time he had yet to come into contact with nanite technology so his integration of a variant code would be less than a fleeting dream.

Lennox operated like clockwork. Removal and disposal was intricately planned and as Mr. Asmir found himself integrated into the foundation of a business incubator being built, Lennox wondered what the world would become. He overheard many a postulation, but none concerned his own memories of what was.

The bus ride was uninvolved. Lennox had made it a point not to absorb any of what was out of fear of what would be. He arrived outside of the Nexus Industries complex and for the first time in his life, he was uncertain. There was no visitor entrance and the device the historical engineers had given him was not a means of monetary exchange, it was something far different.

It was a detonation device.

And the moment he produced it from his pocket, a swarm of security forces stormed his location. Through no fault of his own, they gunned him down, his pleas for stasis went unnoticed, shrugged off as drunken ramblings, that is until the autopsy yielded strange results from his blood tests. It seems a new technology was found in his blood.