Part 4: The Master Plan

There was a stirring in the air as a time transport inserted itself into the new display area of time systems; a sleek ultra-modern unit had formed in the empty space.

A slightly dazed man exited the craft, he checked all around the room. As this display was so new there was only one craft in there, apart from his, the man checked the card just before the machine.

'Type GV589 - Experimental unit. This was one of the first units to achieve temporal transport, this has been put down to the improved intelligence of the memory unit installed in the craft. The maximum distance travelled by this craft in one jump was 1,500 years, although it is theorised that by slaving a second craft to this would increase the distance by a factor of 100 - potentially making this the most powerful time craft yet created'

The man chuckled to himself as he read this, then he pressed a hidden button on the side of the craft, a door opened, lights came on inside the unit, and the man entered.

The main computer had gone into hibernation mode, this was rudely stopped by the man repeatedly hitting the start button; the computer flashed its main console lights to ask him to stop doing that.

"So you're awake now!" The man said, there was no reply, "Oh come on, I know you're functioning, so answer!"

A dull rusty voice said, "Go away, and leave me to waste away." Instead the man started to hit the start button again, "I SAID GO AWAY, your kind decided to place me here, the most you can do is to stop torturing me!"

The man smiled, "You call this torture? Let me tell you your future. You are going to remain here for some time, you will have company soon, and you're all be looked at by snooty-nosed kids who think time-travel is a waste of time, that's what you have to look forward to. Unless you do something about it! In some years time a man will enter this craft with an emergency time unit, he is your chance to take revenge on the whole of mankind!"

The computer voice was disdainful, "Oh yes, so this pitiful human is going to help me destroy the whole of the human race? Does he have a slingshot in his pocket?"

The man smiled, "Oh you have no idea!" He held up a helmet, "Do you know what this is?"

The computer voice was bored, "I guess it's a giant condom! It's a pity your parent's one had a hole in it, now go away!"

The man smiled, "That's a good one, now try this for size." And he put the helmet on his head, closed his eyes and muttered, "open secondary program entry. Code GV589-aplha-beta 337"

The computer voice was suddenly neutral. "Secondary program mode active, standing by for instructions."

The helmet started to glow, the man's eyes glazed over as the circuitry inside the helmet began to interface with the unconscious part of his mind, pulling the data that had been stored there from the human brain and transmitting it into the computer memory.

The process lasted for 5 minutes, after which the helmet switched off, the man - barely moving - managed to drag himself to his feet and then said, "Run program in secondary area, integrate data and reboot circuitry, close secondary program entry."

The neutral computer voice responded, "program accepted, and now running, secondary program area now closed." The lights on the computer dimmed and went out. The man, blinking, stumbled out of the time transport and made his way to the small unit outside, which then returned to the time stream with barely a whisper.

Inside the Time transport the computer restarted itself, "Oh!" it said, "It's a helmet to make you invisible!" After a few more seconds it said, "Okay, you win. I give up, where did you go? Hello? Hello?"

Then the new programming started to work, "So, I've been duped again, these puny humans don't deserve to exist, now what did he say? A man's going to steal me? Good! I know just what to do, I even know how to do it, and it's all here in my circuits. And nobody's going to be able to stop me".

Time Corps Headquarters - present day

Wilma was sitting in Rawlings' office; they were going over the incidents again.

"So you see boss," she was saying, "Although the perp. was our visible enemy, there had to be some one working in the background, and according to my transport Mark, that person was GV589 which we destroyed during the Roman Incursion."

Rawlings was interested at that, "Yes, how did you manage that, I understand that when you all fired your weapons into the system as it was returning to the time stream, and that overloaded the time unit completely, did you know that would happen?"