Modern Medicine for Population Preservation 

by TJ Nelson

 

Dr. Jimmy Feelgood was sitting in his nearly empty healer’s office, except for the medicines he’d stashed in and behind the cabinets, along with the water purifier tablets for himself and the town. He thought he heard something familiar.  

Gunfire! Either I'll have a patient soon…or a corpse. His modern medicine helped a lot of people, but he wasn't a miracle worker; dead is dead in any century. 

Wait, that return fire sounded like a modern weapon! They’ve found me again? Why can’t we get them off our back! We’re just trying to help revitalize our population. Why doesn’t someone, or some. . . thing want that?

I hate this part. More back phasing into the timestream. . .hope this cheap time-scrambler doesn’t reveal me so easily next time! We need this to work!

* * * *

Jimmy arrived back at their cavern time-hold hideaway with the usual array of sparks and arcing exposed electrical wiring. “Dammit Chewy, you have to get those components shielded!” He shouted, avoiding the worst of it by jumping off the platform. He always had to remember to do that or get electrocuted when he came back. 

“With what funding?” he asked. “We haven’t enough to upgrade anything without more. The time components are the priority. And stop calling me Chewy. It’s Chujiro. And ask Shayenne about the supply funding.” He replied. “She is in charge of that. Her and Indirma.” Things were testy enough with the two of them cooped up in the shielded time-hold for weeks on end in between jumps. Adding mechanical, electrical and supply issues on top of all that made things worse off. No one could come in or go out unless it was coordinated and scheduled. It took up immense power from their hidden grid when they did. Spikes had to be shunted with a battery conductor system so they weren’t visible between counties. Any closer looks from authorities had to be avoided. 

He loved calling him Chewy since he knew it annoyed him. “Any decent food around here?” Jimmy asked. “I’m famished. All that boiling of meat and the meager fruit and vegetables has got me hankering some strawberries, asparagus or peaches, even from a can. Haven’t has a decent meal in weeks.”

“Good luck with that,” Chujiro responded. “Put it on the list for when the ladies return. And you’ve only been gone for four days.”

He looked around their small kitchen area, consisting of a table and two chairs with some boxes of food against one wall. “I may not be here when they get back,” Jimmy complained. “I was there for three months, Chewy. I’ll remind you of the time variances involved when I slip into a new stream.” 

“Only three months?” He asked.

He turned back to him and answered, “Yes. And by the way, that time-scrambler you programmed let them find me in that short of a time frame.” He grabbed a container of noodles and pulled off the heating tab and set it down to let it heat up. “I need more time. The water purifiers helped a lot but the medicine takes more time to stabilize the population.”

“Give me the scrambler,” he replied. “I have a new program I want to try on it. It should give you at least a few more months.” He came over to get the device from Jimmy.

He looked at him with a degree of horror and said, “TRY! Might I remind you I am vulnerable if I can’t spot them coming?”

“Just give it to me,” he snapped. “I do the best I can with what I’ve got time for. I could use more help with the time components and shielding.”

Jimmy smirked and said, “Put it on the list.” 

“Very funny,” Chujiro replied. 

Jimmy grabbed his warm noodles and went to the table to eat. As he sat, he said, “Seriously, I need some kind of warning for when they crash my time.”

 “If you could tell me more about who, or what, they are I could program it better. Otherwise, it relies on the ripples of the time stream and that could be very weak depending on their position relative to yours. The same way they can probably sense your incursions.”

“If I stick around to check them out, I am a target if they can sense me at all,” he said. “Judging by the quickness with which the fight this time became apparent, it might be the Luytens, like we suspected. Happened in broad daylight this time. Program it for them. Get the latest specifics from Sciences.” He referred to the aliens they’d possibly seen a few times trying to disrupt their population. They were from a system almost 9 light years from Sol. The activity seen by human astrophysicists in their telescopes aimed at that area detected enough activity to mean they had been active since 200 years ago.

“I get it,” Chujiro said. “They look so different from us people can’t help but be instantly suspicious of them and start firing at them.” 

Jimmy nodded and said, “I can’t believe they don’t at least come at me in the dark so they’re less conspicuous.”

“Maybe they don’t see light and dark like we do, due to their flaring binary stars,” he replied.

“And why are they just subtly attacking the population in the past and not just wiping us out now?”

“That’s a question for Jacob and the science team, Chewy,” Jimmy said, referring to the leaders of their volunteer group of time soldiers as they called themselves, for lack of a better term. It was a new branch of the world government. “We just do the best we can with what we’re good at. Me with healing, you with the electrical and time displacement engineering, the ladies with funding and supplies and the science team to figure all this out.”     

Chujiro started uploading the new program to the device Jimmy used. “I want Procurement to get me better funding and supplies. I know I keep saying it, but it’s true. It affects you too.” 

“I’m sure Indirma and Shayenne are doing the best they can. It’s hard to wring funds from our past without disrupting world markets and the like. Too much disruption and it’s like I went back and cured polio and the measles 20 years earlier than we did. We can’t change things on that grand of a scale or we threaten to kill off our timelines.”

* * * *

Two and a half days later, they heard a crash from the platform for incursion and returns. More popping and electric sizzling could be heard throughout their waking up. 

Chujiro got up and raced to the platform controls, shouting, “Jimmy, try and stabilize the core so I can get this platform more power to receive them. They’re not expected!” 

“Got it,” he replied as he raced to the core controls on the wall near the platform. “You think it’s Science or Procurement paying us an unexpected visit?” He tried stabilizing the power flow through the grid to give Chujiro more power.

“I don’t care,” he replied. “I just hope it’s worth it. They could blow the whole grid and reveal us to someone we can’t explain this to.”

They both worked furiously to allow this to happen, since it seemed important enough. “Holy. . .” he couldn’t even finish the thought. “Multiple incoming. Looks like more than 3 people!” He sounded worried that he couldn’t stabilize the inbound streams.

“Chujiro, give it everything we’ve got!” He shouted as the grid shouted back at him.

“Seriously?” Jimmy looked at him in shock. “Won’t we get caught?”

“Not to worry, I think this is Petrov’s signal coming through”

“The head of our side for the Time War?”

“Yes, crank it up!” He said as the system was getting louder even still. “I need everything. Four, maybe five with him it looks like.” 

Jimmy flipped all the switches he could, giving Chujiro what he needed. “That’s all we have! Let ‘er rip!” He came closer to Chujiro to stay away from the arcing as the final settings were adjusted.

“I’m letting the power shunt back towards the counties and hope I don’t burn out both of them,” he said. “It should shield us from the arcing.”

“So, you didn’t have that option for me?”

“No. You aren’t important enough.”

Chujiro set the last control in place and then hit the switches for the final receive setting. “All set, here they come!” He stepped to the side to prepare to get them off in case of a blowout.

Jimmy did the same as they watched them appear on the platform – all 5 of them. They coalesced and he could see who they all were. Petrov and his aide Marchand, Shayenne, Indirma and someone he didn’t know.

At the end of the fireworks, with nothing blowing up or arcing, they stepped up and greeted them. Chujiro was first, addressing Petrov, his aide, the Procurement ladies and finally the mystery man with a big hug. “Wilson!” He shouted. He made introductions to Jimmy: those he hadn’t seen in a while, Petrov and his aide. “Finally, my first partner in crime, Wilson,” he said as he pointed to his old friend. “He’s the Med-Tech for Division four now.”

“Oh, a fellow Hippocrat,” Jimmy said as shook his hand. “We’ll talk later,” as he sensed there was a major urgency to this visit. The crates they brought could wait, but there were awfully few, he noticed.

Jimmy and Chujiro stepped down and led them to their planning area along the opposite wall from the kitchen space. Jimmy removed some data cards and charts from the tech table they used for planning and presented the spaces for them to sit. “Sorry for the mess,” he said as they all sat. “What is so urgent?” He didn’t say they would probably never be able to use this space again now.

Petrov was the first to speak, of course. “There has come a time that I think we can strike a final blow to the enemy. We have confirmed it is the Luytens that are attempting to cull our human herd.”

Never one to mince words, Jimmy said, “How?” not being able to help himself.

“We captured one of them,” he replied with a gravity to his voice. “We have been able to interrogate by establishing a dialogue with the help of United Nations translating software.”

“And?” Chujiro asked as the only other one who was out of the loop. The aide was setting up something to present on their tech table. He finished.

Petrov spoke again, gesturing to the table, “It goes without saying that this stays confidential, even from the other Divisions. If this doesn’t work, they need to continue on with our mission.

The aide Marchand spoke about what they were seeing on video. He said, “This is the Luytenite. As you can see, they are smaller than we are by far. The war is because they need our planet for colonization. It seems their land masses are shrinking and becoming unlivable. No, they will not quit and they are quite vicious and adamant about it. They are weaker than us but have the technology we do for time incursions. They are trying to kill us off in the past with so much fewer of us on the planet, as they have little weaponry. So far, they have not succeeded as much as they liked and are preparing a final assault so much deeper in the past than they’ve ever gone before, stretching their limits. Almost five hundred years farther back.”

Shock and surprise were the biggest emotions on all their faces, mostly Chujiro and Jimmy, but a little from the ladies too. Apparently, they knew some but not all of that he just detailed in this briefing.   

No one spoke for a moment. “Do we have a plan?” Jimmy asked finally.

“Yes, but it comes with a cost,” Petrov said. “We have 2 choices. Both are tough to swallow.” He turned to Marchand who picked up the explanation. 

Marchand gestured at the tech table saying, “We can stop them where they go in the past and cover up their extinction there, stopping them from spreading the disease and altering our timeline. Or,” he paused trying to get the words out. “We let them spread the disease even further in the mid-1700s like in the original timeline and continue the war here.” He let that sink in.

“We can’t be one hundred percent sure the implications of altering it.”

Wilson spoke up. “We assume Europe is the location. Our lead came from the detainee. He had spoken some French first. So, after more interrogating, we think the abducted children from France’s streets in 1750 is the distraction to be able to hasten the spread of the disease.”

“The choices are clear,” Petrov said. “We either make the final jump from here or pack this location up and continue the war some other way. 

“What disease are they targeting to strengthen?” Jimmy asked.

Dropping his head, Wilson said, “Tuberculosis.” The whole room went quiet.