The Ability to Tilt at Windmills

This story is the result of a challenge thread about Time Travel which may lead to a future chain story here on Literotica. This particular story has little 'erotica' and very little actual science although it is entirely fictional. The pre-story 'introduction' is by slyc_willie.

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The Temporal Management Agency was established in 2004 once it was determined that physical time travel was possible and even practical. The brainchild of Lithuanian scientist Dr. Andrej Turgenyev and US DOD scientist Dr. Phineas Jasper, the TPRFG -- Temporal Probability/Redundancy Field Generator (also known as the 'Tap') -- was constructed under a secret joint venture of UN member nations, under the auspices of the United States Government.

The Tap is housed in a secret location in Nebraska, away from major centers of civilization. The TMA is an ultra-top-secret agency of which only its members and high-level government officials are aware.

The genesis for the TMA came when historians, working with the Tap's initial ability to simply 'look' into the past, noticed certain events in history being altered by members of a group called the Rectifiers. It is unknown who or what the Rectifiers actually are, as it is believed they come from some point in the not-too-distant future.

The TPRFG maintains the Agency in the 'correct' timeline, regardless of what changes are made to history by the Rectifiers. It is only because of this effect that the TMA is able to discern the true timeline from any altered ones.

AUGUST 2000. DANZIGER INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL SCIENCE.

"You sent for me sir... miss... erm" Johnson was unsure about the etiquette of the historical research centre and simply called everyone sir. This was the first time his fallback had failed. Being seconded to temporal headquarters 'for the duration' this was the first woman he had met, had to formally address, in the whole building.

"Susan will be fine." she said.

"Yes ma'am. Miss. Susan."

Susan smiled. Quite apart from his lithe form and obvious good looks she found herself attracted to his boyish confusion and had to physically and figuratively shake herself out of this instant infatuation as she saw it.

"I expect you've been wondering why you've been attached to this department?"

"Yes... Susan. I'm a tech not a professor."

"Please take a seat." she waved at the chair in front of her ornate desk covered in script and a large, very large computer monitor. "Tell me what you know about our department."

"Very little I'm afraid" he began as he sat down on the proffered seat. "Formed in 1998 after the discovery of the Tachyon Inhibitor and used as a research tool to investigate various historical points up to I think... about 55BC -"

Susan cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Yes, yes. Tell me about the Inhibitor particularly, without the history and not too much tech.."

Johnson warmed more to this task. The Tachyon Inhibitor is a method of capturing light particles, well not strictly particles, but definitely not waves as you know -"

Susan held up her hand again. "Too much tech." She smiled and shifted in her seat causing the buttons on her silk shirt to strain and reveal glimpses of flesh and flesh coloured brassiere.

Johnson coughed and averted his eyes then grimaced and recited. "The Tachyon Inhibitor captures light from the past and through very complex computer algorithms approximates accurate real time images of history." He stopped dead.

"Yes, well." Susan said as she rose from her chair and walked around the desk to sit on the edge facing Johnson. "A bit stunted and uninformative but I suspect I pushed you into that. Tell me about 'Don Quixote'"

Johnson sunk a little in his seat at her approach knowing he was being lead, chided and he suspected flirted with.

Susan raised her leg and placed the long heel of her definitely un-formal footwear on the soft cushion of the seat between his thighs, pointing her toe at his chest. "Not the Man of La Mancha just the phase IV project."

Johnson coughed again and nervously loosened his tie before he began. "Don Quixote is a machine designed to increase the temporal energy of the Tachyon Inhibitor and allow the unit to see further than 55BC and to increase the resolution by a factor of 28."

"Did you know..." Susan said as she leaned forward, revealing a copious amount of cleavage between the three undone buttons at the neck of her shirt. She lowered her voice so that Johnson had to lean slightly to hear her breathy words: "It doesn't work."

"Doesn't..." he swallowed "work?".

Susan pressed the sole of her shoe into Johnson's crotch three times, emphasising each word. "It. Doesn't. Work."

"I was on the initial build of that project." he spluttered. "I led the design the architecture."

"None the less." Susan smiled, hopping down from the desk. She stepped between his knees, bent forward with her lips to his ears giving him a view clear down her shirt front and whispered "It doesn't work."

"I want you to walk with me Johnson." Susan said and headed out of the door, not even bothering to see if he followed.

Along a short corridor Susan paused, seemingly for no reason. At four separate places along the corridor Susan paused. She didn't look back to see if Johnson were there or not she simply paused as if expecting or waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. She walked to the end of the corridor and stood beside a plain wood paneled door waiting now for Johnson to catch up.

When Johnson was within a couple of paces Susan pushed at the door which opened ponderously and very obviously not from the slight pressure she had applied. She turned on the threshold and faced Johnson squarely. Johnson for his part, in his attempt to catch up was now standing toe to toe with her.

She leaned forward. Johnson held his ground. The very tips of Susan's chest pushed into the fabric of Johnson's shirt, holding him at bay. She spoke softly and with a throaty voice.

"You have passed through four checkpoints, this is the last and most dangerous if you are not who you are supposed to be." Her eyes indicated glowing beads embedded in the door frame which Johnson could see were readied lasers.

"Are you sure you're Johnson?" she asked.

Completely stunned and confused by the recently flirtatious and now apparently deadly woman in front of him Johnson simply nodded not trusting his voice.

"Absolutely and entirely certain?" she asked.

He nodded his head again and his usually immaculate fringe of hair flopped forward onto his forehead rimed with sweat. He was also acutely aware of the embarrassment potential afforded by his state of arousal.

'Covered with confusion' was a phrase that Johnson had barely given thought to before now. Now that he was experiencing it he understood completely.

Susan smiled a wicked grin and piped: "This way then." as she turned and marched through the doorway.

Johnson was a theory tech. Not quite an engineer, not quite a physicist, he was what had come to be known as a practical mathematician. He could envisage his dreams in solid form. In machines. Specifically in theTemporal Probability/Redundancy Field Generator or TAP. However practical he was he was not prepared for the sight or size of the TAP chamber.

Across two walls of the chamber were video panels, many with different scenes, some obviously historical, some contemporary and quite a few of them a murky, swirling grey. The scenes on the far wall were too distant to make out clearly, not because they were unfocussed or fuzzy but simply because they were so far away, about the distance of a football field.

Separating each panel and rising in tiers were doors, in and out of which there flew, trotted, strolled or ambled a number of people in the classic white lab coats and carrying the ubiquitous clipboard of every mad scientist B movie.

The opposite walls facing the screen banks were both blank and bland. Unadorned, smooth faced, plaster work. Except for two doors both as ordinary as the one he had entered.

Susan took his arm and waved at a cubic... something. situated towards the centre of the chamber. Susan indicated theatrically with a sweeping open palm and intoned "Behold; Don Quixote."

"You told me it didn't work." Johnson muttered.

"It doesn't. Not the way you described its function. It doesn't magnify, it doesn't amplify and it certainly doesn't reach further back than 55BC."

As she spoke those words the closest screen flickered and resolved from the swirling gray to a slightly fuzzy scene from pre-antiquity.

A desert city, the narrow streets lined with robed spectators. A short column of what appeared to be Roman soldiery, swords drawn, escorting three, broke backed, disheveled, living caryatids. Planks of heavy wood stooped their shoulders as they trudged upwards through dust and jeers.

Johnson blinked and the scene dissolved again to swirling gray. "The road to Calvary." he breathed. "Was that..?"

"We believe so. Fifteen seconds is as long as we can focus that far back. We have approximately eight seconds of Boudicca in the Kentish swampland, and previous to that what we think is Julius Caesar apparently alighting from a ship: two seconds. So, as you can see, Don Quixote hasn't extended our range or resolution."

"Isn't that enough anyway?" Johnson asked still dazed by the sight of a living Jesus Christ. "Aside from the elegance of the maths and the clues from Turgenyev and Jasper I never saw much practical value in Don Quixote, with more than two and a half thousand years of history to recall at will"

"Two and a half thousand years is ample for a lot of historians yes but what of Gilgamesh and Urr and Ogbashan and The Deluge, Tutankhamun and Ethiopia and Peking Man?"

"That's what Don Quixote was commissioned for." Johnson tried defending his creation.

"And I've told you, Don Quixote doesn't work."

"Right. I need to see the drawing spec. I need to get hold of my computer. You have a link here? How was he integrated with the TAP? Show me the engineering plan -"

Susan cut off Johnson's stream by taking his arm and standing once more toe to toe with him. This time her breasts flattened against his chest and one knee bent to brush delicately along the inside of his thigh. Johnson stopped in mid-stream.

"I've obviously misled you." she said. "It doesn't work as you intended."

The words, combined with the action brought Johnson back to the present and the TAP Chamber making him shake with both anger and frustration. "Not as I intended? Then how does it work?" he almost shouted into Susan's face.

Susan turned again on the spot and strode off. "Walk with me."

Johnson stumbled forward having been leaning towards Susan unconsciously increasing their intimate contact as they stood toe to toe.

They eventually reached the far side of the cubic... something on the floor of the chamber and Johnson noted a vast array of umbilicals, probes and muzzles emanating from the rear of the... box? Definitely not in his design drawings nor could he assimilate them in the maths vying for attention inside his head.

"Stand here." Susan indicated a painted cross on the floor. Johnson stood. "This is by way of demonstration and," she paused, "a rather convincing one." Susan stepped back and raised a freckled arm above her head then brought it down with a chopping motion.

Johnson was immediately bathed in sweat over his whole body, the mid-day heat was stifling and before he could marshal his senses he felt the blow of the pommel of a short sword strike the back of his head causing him to fall into the dry baked dust of the road. He braced himself for another blow and when the moment passed he turned his head to see a short column of Roman soldiery, faces amused, some puzzled with a frown, passing him by. Then came the condemned and he realised where he was. He scrabbled forward in the dust and dry air reaching for the hem of a long worn, dirty robe swaying about the weary feet of a sickly thin, bearded creature struggling beneath the weight of a large cross beam. "Oh dear God." he cried as the scene and the heat dissolved around him, leaving him once more on the dry, cross marked floor, of the chamber.

Tears flowed down his cheeks as Susan, with surprising strength, lifted him to his feet like a child and led him, weeping into her breast, through one of the doors in the far wall, where she left him in a smallish office that afforded the luxury of a short couch where he huddled and cried inconsolably.