Our Hopes for Tomorrow Began Yesterday - 2. Operation Backspace

Theta Indus 337 System

7th Fleet Anchorage & Attached Facilities

Classified Research Station

2620 April 04 0730

The station’s small staff was gathered around what seemed like an overlarge conference table for the gathering. Dr. Bhasin rapped his knuckles on the table and said, “Settle down. Dr. Simmons, you have the floor.”

Alisha Simmons looked up from her computer pad and said, “As of the last series of temporal incursions, we now have a hundred subjects in stasis. Many of them were wounded, some quite severely, but we have used stasis surgery to repair any wounds and installed a standard set of implants.”

Commander Alex Taylor said, “We could get many more if we could just relax the rules.”

Dr. Bhasin sighed and said, “We’ve been over this, Alex. We must not risk creating a paradox. When we take one of these young men from a historically fatal situation, we must stick to the rules. It can only be men who were never recovered.”

Dr. Simmons scoffed, “Men? I’ve got subjects as young as fourteen. They should be in school.”

Taylor sat back in his chair and said, “That’s another part of the criteria I’m not so sure about.”

Simmons said, “We need subjects mentally flexible enough to jump from a near-death experience in a war almost seven hundred years to our time. Furthermore, this cuts all their ties to their former lives. Anyone they knew in their native timeline, family, friends, and acquaintances are gone. This would be difficult for anyone, but younger people will be the most resilient and should have an easier time with it than a mature adult with a family.”

Commander Taylor said, “I have to admit I admire them. History called them the greatest generation. If anyone can do this, it should be them, and if this works out, there are thousands more of them.”

Dr. Bhasin said, “Dr. Simmons, you plan to bring a few out, get them acclimated, and see if they can help us with the rest. What difficulties do you foresee?”

Simmons looked at her pad and said, “The potential problems are numerous, but the worst one by far is nationalism. We have young men from various cultures that were at war against one another. They might trust their countrymen. They might trust their allies. It will take some work to get them working with old enemies.”

She continued, “They have the standard implant packages so that language won’t be an issue. Neural education should be able to bring them up to Alliance standards in just a few weeks. It’s just… We have British sailors who would have been killed by a U-boat. Then we have members of a U-boat crew. That’s not to mention how we will deal with the Japanese.”

Bhasin stroked his beard thoughtfully and asked, “Your point is well taken, Alisha. We don’t have the kinds of specialists we need to do this, but we have our orders. We have some help coming starting this week. Operation Backspace is a go.”

Taylor said, “We are just caretakers. How did we draw a mission like this?”

Dr. Bhasin grinned sardonically and said, “What is it the Fleet brass calls a near-impossible mission? Ah, yes. Now I remember. It's an opportunity to excel, Al.”