Time Jumper

I had just finished a field assignment and was returning to home base when the annoying tick, tick, in my left ear alerted me to an incoming call from the USSA, the Universal Space Security Agency, where I was employed as an agent in their TJO division. That is the Time Jumping Organization where I work, which seldom used mundane methods for contacting their agents in the field. Under protest, I allowed them to surgically place a Com Link just behind the left ear in place of the Mastoid bone. This communication link was then attached to the brain. The device served many purposes the least of which is to affect silent communication between the wearer and the TJO command center. Another function was to allow super sensitive hearing, monitor body vitals, and allow the wearer to snoop in on any electronic communication system, unless you are in a period of time where there is no such technology. It has been very useful in tracking those individuals who thought to escape into such time periods to avoid detection. It wasn’t obvious to them that they would stand out like a sore thumb when they forgot their own implants and Time Marker inserted into their blood streams would signal a tracker to their where abouts. Regardless of these advantages, it was a permanent source of annoyance, this vexation on the part of the USSA and TJO to always be able to contact me whenever they wanted to. Usually right after an assignment ended or during an extended leave for restoration and relaxation. The tick, tick, would keep on ticking until you called in your location, or failing to do so would result in a louder ticking until you did, or it would kill you. Only a suicidal agent would ignore the ticking, only a very few did willingly. Since I am not willing, I called in my location and was shocked to find a new assignment waiting for me. I was ordered back to the American Division of TJO’ s, at the HQ of the USSA I was to report as of yesterday and yesterday was two days ago. The code book was clear on what I was to do. I would jump back 48 hours and arrived at HQ right on time.
Time Jumping is like a very old hat, in the year 2795, a very comfortable part of your life. Anyone with the right connections and permits could time jump, and the government was as fussy as it could be when it came to giving out permits to just anyone. So far only the USSA TJO were permitted to time jump. All others were considered rogues, criminals who time jumped to affect changes in the time line to benefit their own criminal activities. It was my job to catch these rogues and correct the time line. It wasn’t an easy job, but the travel perks were out of this world literally when your assignment took you off planet. Off planet time jumping was rare, so us TJO agents spent much of our time on planet bouncing around the time line to various points in history. Jumps ahead were possible, but very risky when you consider the fact that you could reach a point in future time where you come across some new unknown element of decease, bacteria contamination, or whatever that you could bring back into past time. Past times would not have the means to combat or identify the problem and earth would perish unable to fight the contaminates of the future. Jumping ahead was limited to just a few hours to under a few days of present time, usually done to give the MTC an observation of how a mission might turn out.