The Uber arrived on time in front of Danielle's dad's house, a modest rancher near the Pahrump Valley Highway. It usually took a bit more than an hour for her father to drive to Las Vegas, which was where she was going. Normally, paying a hundred bucks, one way, to get to the big city was out of the question for Danielle, but the 'Glasses AI' (that is how she was referring to the texts on the bottom of her vision) had paid for and arranged the ride. True to its word, the driver was a competent and middle aged woman, who seemed completely unconnected to the time travelling organisation that Danielle had joined up with. She made pleasant small talk with Danielle, and didn't seem to mind when Danielle spent some of the time scrolling through web sites on her phone. That helped pass the time of the drive.

  About an hour later and they were there. Sunset Park! One of Danielle's favourite parks in Las Vegas. Any house near this place must be a nice one. One last turn and the car pulled up to a metal entrance gate. The Uber driver pulled out her phone, brought up an app and typed in a few words. The metal doors of the gate swung open and she drove inside. First house on the left.

  "Here we are," explained the driver. "I hope that you enjoy the visit. A very nice place this is! I will be working in the local area until 3:00 and I will be by to pick you up at that time. If you need to change your return trip time, just text my vehicle on the Uber app. I can stay in Vegas as late as 6:00 if you need me to."

  "Thanks so much for the ride. I will text you if anything changes," replied Danielle.

  The Uber made a quick U-turn and exited the same gate as they had entered from. The large single floor home actually backed right on to Sunset Park. 'Must be nice,' thought Danielle, a bit of envy in her thoughts.

  The front door opened as she walked up the sidewalk. A couple in their sixties warmly greeted Danielle. "You made it! Welcome to our home. Please come in. No need to take off your shoes," explained the woman of the couple. Both of them seemed really pleasant and completely normal people. No glasses on the woman, but the man of the house did sport a pair of conservatively fashionable glasses.

  The inside of the place was just as nice as the outside. These people were doing well. Pleasant artwork on the walls, nice furniture, organised and clean. Not at all like her dad's place. "I am John, and this is my wife Cassandra," explained the man.

  "Pleased to meet you, I am Danielle."

  Cassandra offered Danielle some fresh juice, and the three of them discussed her drive down from Pahrump and asked what she thought of this part of Las Vegas. Eventually, John suggested that they go for a walk in Sunset Park while Cassandra prepared lunch. "We have to discuss some defence contact stuff," he explained to his wife. That must have seemed a bit odd to her, being that Danielle was barely twenty years old, but she seemed to accept the explanation. Perhaps Danielle was not the first 'trainee' to visit their home. "Could you please leave your glasses on the table during our walk?" Danielle then noticed that John had already left his on the table.

  "Sure, I guess," answered Danielle slipping them off of her forehead, folding them and placing them onto the table.

  Outside the home, John led Danielle towards the park via a short access foot path. Sunset Park was always a nice place to walk. They made their way down towards the lake. John put on a face mask while they walked, then responded to Danielle's curious expression. "Oh, don't worry! I am not concerned about catching anything from you. I just need to be able to speak candidly, and I don't want any cameras to be able to read my lips."

  "What? Really? Should I put on a mask too?" asked Danielle. She hadn't worn a covid mask for many years, although there was always someone in a crowd wearing one.

  "No, I don't think so. You've only been exposed to information directly from head office so far. I don't imagine that anything you would have to say would concern them. Not yet anyway. But for me, I have found that my life is simpler if I don't get observed rocking the boat." responded John.

  "Let's get started then," he began. "So you want to be a Time Agent? Well done! Welcome aboard."

  "Sometimes I am not so sure I am comfortable with the idea. What do you think? Is it worth it?" asked Danielle as they walked towards the lake along the cinder pathway, lined with desert willow trees and African sumacs.

  "Well there is a good question; and it depends what you are looking to get out of the deal, but as you can see," he said waving his arms at his surroundings, "it has worked out pretty well for me. There is no way on Earth that I was ever going to wind up living in a place like this, without becoming a time technician. No way at all."

  "Is it dangerous?" asked Danielle. That single question really was at the centre of all of her misgivings regarding this new profession.

  "It can be," replied Agent John thoughtfully, "but no more dangerous than any other job, I don't think. Every profession carries risks, and just so long as you never take on being a level 4, I don't think that you have much to worry about. The Arachnid AI is very careful about the safety of its agents, and there really is a great deal of respect out there between the factions. Battlefield honour is a real thing in the Time War."

  "But Agent Remington died," responded Danielle. "I saw him. He said that others had died as well."

  "Remington was a level 4," stated Agent John. Apparently that explained everything. One thing that Danielle resolved, there and then, was to never become a level 4 time technician. Maybe to be safe, she should set her sights on level 2 and leave it at that.

  "What sort of missions do time technicians perform?" asked Danielle, imagining all sorts of combat roles in her mind. Ernest Remington looked like he had been involved in a conflict of some kind. He sported a couple of significant facial scars.

  "Mostly intelligence gathering and surveillance, but there are many specialities. The AI will give you a classification at the end of your training. Always keep in mind the conservative nature of the Arachnid AI. The Arachnid faction is based in North America and so most of its operations on this continent have to do with preserving the integrity of the existing time line. Arguably, it is the most powerful of the four AIs in 2428. It certainly believes itself to be the most powerful. So most missions babysit key points in history, which might be seen to have benefited the North American ability to control energy supplies. It all comes down to how much juice is available to the AIs in 2428."

  Stolen story; please report.

  Danielle was doing her best to follow John's train of thought. "The other thing to keep in mind that the last thing these AIs want to do is send agents off to perform some time alteration and have it backfire. That encourages them to be judicious in their application of influencing the historical time line. Millions of potential missions are considered before one is approved. That is most of what our boss does with its time: Running scenario after scenario after scenario through its mega brain and trying to predict the consequences of this or that twig to some historical event or other."

  "On the other hand, missions that take place outside of North America can become somewhat more elaborate. Only level threes and above can act overseas. I never got past level 2 so I have spent my entire career working in the North American theatre."

  "What do you do in North America?" Danielle asked, as they walked along the shore of Sunset lake.

  Agent John had been scanning the walkers as he carried on the conversation with Danielle. At that point he gently touched her shoulder and steered her sideways onto a new trail, away from a large group of Japanese tourists. "I'm a babysitter," explained Agent John, and when Danielle expressed a bit of disappointment, he clarified, "Someone has to do it. At least its a living."

  "Why don't the AIs just send themselves back in time?" asked Danielle?

  "Good question. In theory sending larger and more powerful AIs back in time would give a competitive advantage to the continent that received it. However, every time the scenario was analysed the result always turned out the same. The newly arriving AI simply shut off the taps to the future. In those mock missions the door literally closes and the AIs that exist in 2428 are erased from existence. No AI would ever risk that. So influence is exercised in a judicious manner, always seeking to preserve the flow of political power, economic power, and above all electrical power forwards to the year 2428. There is one thing that I find interesting though. It is said that no time travel is possible to the years following 2428. The Arachnid AI never mentions 2029 or any subsequent year. I've been doing this job for forty years and the AI time line never advances. Its always 2428 when you talk to headquarters. My guess is this: Anybody who lives after 2429 is fucked. Excuse my language. The four AIs have sewn up everything and let nothing go past them. I doubt that there even is a future after 2428."

  That was mind boggling to Danielle. "Have you ever been to 2428?"

  "No, no, no! Not even close. Nobody is ever deployed forwards in time. While it is theoretically possible, it is just not done by the Arachnids. I am not completely sure about the other factions but alterations are always performed in the past. I have met a few agents from future years, but they were only from years that I have now already lived through, so I can't give you any insights."

  "Why is so much attention paid to the past?" asked Danielle. "Wouldn't the time battles be really heating up in the years leading up to 2428?"

  "Well, I have put a lot of thought into this, and asked the questions. Today's AIs are currently a threat to anyone who makes their living sitting in front of a computer screen. AIs type faster, work longer, make fewer mistakes and never take days off. The only jobs that will survive will be hands on, tangible, real world jobs. You're young, you're probably already thinking about this."

  John was right on the mark. That was one of the reasons that Danielle had chosen the career of paraprofessional education assistant. Helping disadvantaged kids get through public school had to be something that real humans would have to do. Danielle doubted that robots and computers would ever be allowed to care for children with autism, learning disabilities or especially physical disabilities.

  "Fifty years from now, considering that robot technology will be married to AI technology, there might hardly be a job left for humans on the whole Earth. My thinking leads me to believe that the AIs might be able to fight with each other directly in the near future. No need for human agents! But let's consider the past. What can an AI do to directly influence the historical events of the Reformation? What about the Hundred Years War? World War I? Columbus sailing to the Americas? etc. etc. etc. The only possible way to affect that history is to send agents back in time. That is why now is such a critical moment in the Time War. The Arachnid AI can perform some serious computer tricks in this era. Sending actual people and gear is incredibly energy consuming, but while manipulating the layout of electrons on a computer chip is no party trick, done on a whim, it does use vastly less energy. So the AI can be fairly enthusiastic with its computer related interventions. Not so enthusiastic as to change the time lines drastically, but it seems willing to throw around considerable amounts of money and influence to achieve its goals. I assume that the AI did something for you to help convince you to accept the job?"

  "Ya, he paid off my credit card," explained Danielle.

  "There you go. He couldn't do that if you lived in the eighteenth century."

  "So you are saying that the Arachnid AI is actively intervening in the day to day running of today's computers?"asked Danielle.

  "Absolutely!" replied Agent John. "Has his fingers in everything! Yet is very good at covering his tracks and staying below the radar."

  "Steering all of human history towards a goal of feeding itself energy in future centuries."

  "That pretty much sums it up," responded Agent John.

  "Why would I want to be part of an organisation that does this?" asked Danielle.

  "Well that's a question that only you can answer. The Time War will continue across the centuries whether or not you join in. You will have to live with its effects, whether or not you are ever a time agent. But if you have some skin in the game, you might be better informed, and you might be able to make better decisions with your own life. You might even help us defeat the Serpents, or the Tigers, or maybe the Dragons. But the Dragons are really tough." John smiled, then laughed. "Just kidding. This war is never going to end."

  "Do I quit my job, or withdraw from school or move somewhere?" wondered Danielle out loud.

  "No, no no! Nothing like that. The time agent always leads an outwardly normal life. The missions themselves take no time whatsoever from your timeline. The only impact on your home timeline is the time it takes you to travel to your timeline departure and return locations. So you can theoretically be deployed for months, and return just a second after you leave. And you won't be involved in very many operations at all. Maybe one or two or three per year, for most agents. Your dispatches will be carefully tailored to your strengths and weaknesses as a person. The Arachnid AI was probably watching you for years before it recruited you."

  "What?" asked Danielle incredulously.

  "Yes. Basically all of those conspiracy theorists were right: Everyone is tracked and monitored. Society is being manipulated. They just have the wrong entity in mind as the perpetrator."

  John was leading them back up the hill to his home.

  "Does your wife know who you work for, John?" Danielle was starting to wonder how much she knew.

  "Cassandra doesn't have a clue. She thinks that I work for a defence contractor, and can't tell her anything about my job."

  "Wow." thought Danielle.

  "I think that our lunch is ready! Smells good 'eh?" said John leading them back into the house, and stuffing his covid mask into his back pocket.

  ________________________________________________________________________

  As the Uber made it's way back towards the highway Danielle's attention was attracted to an odd sign post, the headline of which read: 1Internet Origin Historical Landmark. There was some small print as well but that was impossible to read as the car was moving too fast. "Could we possibly just turn back for a moment?" asked Danielle. "I would really like to read the rest of the sign back there."

  "Sure," responded the kind driver, as she performed a U-turn. "I don't mind a bit," she added as she pulled up next to the sign.

  Next to the road was a simple metal sign from the Nevada Historical Society, mounted on a concrete poll: 1 1981 Internet Origin. The small print continued. This is the site of the first computer cable connection between two universities. UNLV and UNR completed the connection of their computer networks together on this site, December 14, 1981.

  'Wow!' thought Danielle. 'I guess that I know what he is babysitting.'