August 24, 2347, Europa orbit, Jupiter, Solaris system
22:30
”Status, Zelenskyy?”
Admiral Nimanja stretched in her command chair, the glow of the large screens around her illuminating her hairy face as she responded to the Special Agent.
"Status report, Sunguard Command Ship Zelenskyy. All systems functional. We await your orders, sir.”
“And your other ships?”
"We are well above error tolerance by a good margin.” Nimanja responded, after a quick look at the status screens. “The Battlecruiser Harrisburg has reported minor issues with its computer systems - nothing that would interfere with the mission, sir. A fighter stationed on the Deep Space Carrier Oradea has reported a suspected burnthrough incident. It is currently being investigated. Additionally, a minor cold cluster has emerged among the Homo sapiens crew aboard the Battlecruiser Kisangani, but otherwise, all ships are operational. We are ready for departure, sir.”
Paul nodded slightly.
"Very good. Initiate pre-jump sequence,” he ordered.
“Immediately, sir,” Nimanja confirmed. “It feels good to have you back on board, sir, if I may say so.”
Paul smiled faintly. “Thank you, Killa. I didn't think I missed the army, but now I realize this is where I belong.”
Her rigid posture softened at the use of her first name. And with no other crew listening in, formality melted away.
"We really need this training mission, Paul. A quarter of our crew has never experienced full-scale training before," she said, her tone casual now.
“I'm afraid you might be disappointed this time,” Paul replied. "I’m going down alone."
“Yes, I understood that,” Killa said with a nod. “But you'll still need our support from orbit.”
"Of course. But those stationed behind Luna, or out in the asteroid belt, won’t get much action.”
“They’ll get their training, don’t worry,” Killa replied. “Being on high alert, 24/7 for a year - that’s more than enough training. It’ll keep them sharp, teach them not to grow complacent.”
Paul chuckled lightly. "You're probably right. I just feel guilty for not training them more often over the past century."
"There's no need for apologies, Paul," Killa said gently. “We all go through different phases. You’ve had a period where you needed to slow down, stay closer to home. You’ve come out of that phase now. You’re ready for larger missions again. And we trust you.”
The Special Agent looked out the massive window from the command bridge of his flagship. There, out in the cold expanses of space around Europa, floated the entire 256th Army of the Sunguard. Two hundred thousand soldiers, men and women, from the four races, stood ready under his command. He didn’t want to admit it, but there was a part of him that felt at home here. Commanding an Army, it suited him more than he liked to admit. He had been designed for this, shaped by his creators to thrive in this role. But why had it taken him so long to embrace it?
"The pre-jump sequence is complete, sir." Admiral Nimanja interrupted his thoughts.
Paul straightened and focused on the task ahead of him.
“Sunguard Special Agent Paul Williams to the 256th Army of the Sunguard. Initiate jump sequence. Target coordinate 19990712AEW32TR. Good luck, soldiers.”
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May 14, 1992, Sacramento, Earth
5:37 PM
“You’re ugly, and you stink!”
The young girl in the corner of the sandbox was crouched down, crying. She didn’t know her that well. Her name was Sally, a neighbor’s kid, a few months older than Ellie. They’d never really played before. In front of her stood a boy, two years older than she was, and not from this neighborhood, though Ellie had seen him come here to play now and then. Billy. Billy was his name. Sometimes, little facts like that just popped up in her head, and she knew with certainty they were true. She must have heard it somewhere, at some time, and once she’d heard something, it tended to stick around, even though she couldn’t always remember it.
“Your parents stink, too!” Billy shouted at the crying girl, waving his hands around in an attempt to seem more intimidating than he really was. It wasn’t the most eloquent argument, but then again, being eloquent wasn’t really his style. It still worked wonders.
As she saw the scene playing out in front of her, a tear traced a silent path down Ellie’s cheek. Billy’s unkind words weren’t directed at her, but she could feel what the girl in the sandbox felt. Not literally, of course. But she could so easily put herself in her place, and when she did, she could feel what Sally must be feeling right now. And with the certainty that only comes with being a child, that there is right in this universe, and there is wrong, and what Billy did put him squarely in the “wrong” corner, she stepped forward and told him to leave.
“Go away!” she said with a loud voice. “You’re hurting her!”
Billy turned around, gawked at the scrawny little freckled girl who dared to interrupt his entertainment for the day.
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“You stink too!” he spat at her. “I don’t like you!” No, Billy wasn’t exactly a master of words.
But what he said didn’t seem to hurt Ellie the way it had hurt Sally. Ellie knew she didn’t smell bad, so why should she care what the boy said about her? He was just making a faulty statement that said more about him than it did about her. If anything, it was he who stank, Ellie thought. She had always had a keen nose…
She took one more step forward. The boy looked into her eyes, and what he saw there suddenly filled him with uncertainty. There was something there - something almost cold, a certainty about her that made him take a step back, despite being both older and larger. Like she was a predator, and he was merely the prey.
“You will go away. Now.”
Billy turned around and began to run away from the playground. The girl was creepy, and he didn’t want to be around her.
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July 12, 1999, Washington, D.C., Earth
1:04 PM
Paul Williams casually strolled down Pennsylvania Avenue, blending in with the pedestrians. A short man with a slight build, dressed in an unremarkable, plain shirt, he did not stand out in a crowd. No one would pay him any attention. The armed guards at the White House were alert, scanning the crowd for potential threats. However, even they didn’t pay him any attention until he was just a few yards from the tall iron fence. Once he got there, they kept their eyes on him, but as long as he remained on the other side of the fence, they wouldn’t intervene. From their point of view, he was just another visitor, gazing at perhaps the most famous building in the world.
But Paul had no intention of staying on his side of the fence.
One second, he was casually strolling toward it, and the next, he was flying through the air, four meters above the ground, in a jump that landed him on the other side of the fence. The highly trained guards, quick to respond, reacted on instinct - despite not fully understanding what had just occurred.
“Halt!”, they barked, pulling their weapons. “On the ground, now!”
Paul's face transformed. No longer unassuming, it now radiated purpose and command. The guards, staring into his intelligent eyes and disliking what they saw, tried to gain control of the situation but found themselves hopelessly out of their depth. They were now facing an intruder unlike anything before.
With a voice that resonated with the might and authority of the entire Terran Federation behind him, he commanded the guards to stand aside.
“This is a Sunguard training exercise. By order of the Solar Command, you are hereby ordered to stand down and escort me to Mr. Clinton. You will comply. Now.”
The guards hesitated. As they did not recognize Paul’s authority, they could not comply. Instead, they fell back on their training and prepared to open fire.
But when they attempted to pull their triggers, their fingers instantly grew limp, as if afflicted by paresthesia. No matter how hard they tried, they could not make their fingers obey.
“You will escort me to Mr. Clinton. Now,” Paul repeated, his voice now even more authoritative.
The guards, now with fear in their eyes, stood frozen, unsure of what to do next. They had been selected for their unwavering loyalty, their ability to follow orders without question, and had been trained to handle high-stress situations. But here, on the White House lawn, they found themselves faced with a situation that defied every protocol. They were now confronted by a being whose existence defied their entire frame of reference.
One of them, a tall, broad-shouldered Secret Service agent, tried to subdue Paul in hand-to-hand combat. After all, that’s something you can do even with a numb finger. Paul broke his opponent’s arm as effortlessly as snapping a brittle twig in the woods. He then continued to walk across the neatly trimmed grass of the North Lawn towards the White House.
Entering the grounds from Pennsylvania Avenue was a deliberate choice he had made. Not only did it put his incursion in full view of the public, but it was also the most direct route to the Oval Office for someone with his capabilities - and, from the Secret Service's perspective, perhaps the route they least expected an invader to take.
Upon reaching the white-stone north-facing wall of the West Colonnade, Paul easily climbed over it and jumped down into the Rose Garden on the other side. The guards on the roof met the same fate as those at the outer fence - swiftly incapacitated, sometimes with broken bones, but not permanently harmed.
When he reached the large windows of the Oval Office a minute later, the once-pristine lawn was now littered with the broken bodies of several more Secret Service agents. All alive, all in pain, and none of them had ever had even the slightest chance of stopping or even slowing him down. And even though he had known this would be the outcome, knew they would never simply follow his orders and let him through, he felt a certain sadness that they hadn’t listened to him. Had they done so, the result would still have been the same - him, inside the White House - but without having to inflict fear and pain on dedicated guards who were only doing their job.
Well, now he was here. He knocked on the reinforced glass. Inside the grand Oval Office, he could see Clinton, his face a mix of uncertainty and tension, unsure whether he should hide in fear or order Paul to leave. In the end, he was the President, after all - and you didn’t become the President of the United States by being a coward, not in this century, at least. Clinton rose from his leather-bound chair, straightened his suit, and walked to the other side of the thick, bulletproof window.
A window most certainly not made to be opened from the outside. Paul smashed the inch-thick armored glass with his elbow. It didn’t shatter but cracked under the force, and he pushed the pieces aside to create a hole large enough to enter.
Paul had to give Clinton credit for his reaction. On other training exercises, he’d seen world leaders cry like children when faced with the awesome might of the Sunguard. Once, he had even seen Mr. Putin lose control of his bodily functions when ordered to withdraw his forces from Ukraine in 2023.
Clinton didn’t crack like that.
“Who are you?”, he asked. Fear was apparent in his voice, but there was strength there, too.
“My name is Paul Williams,” Paul answered. “I am a Special Agent of the Sunguard, on a training exercise from the year 2347. The parameters of this training mission are to enforce a complete ban on civilian use of firearms in the United States in the year 1999. Consequently, I hereby outlaw all private ownership of firearms. You will immediately begin destroying all those that exist within the nation’s border.”
Clinton stared at him in confused silence, his mind racing to process the situation. But he was an intelligent man, and from the way Paul had entered the room - effortlessly breaking the security perimeter - it was obvious this was no mere lunatic strolling into the Oval Office. Although he didn’t fully understand the context, he believed the truth of what Paul had told him. Believing it, however, didn’t equate to automatic compliance.
“While I’m not entirely unsympathetic to what you’re asking, it is something I cannot do,” Clinton replied cautiously. “In this country, we have a Constitution that guarantees the right to private ownership of weapons. I can’t just violate it. I neither have, nor should have, that authority.”
“I am aware of those facts,” Paul answered, his tone unyielding. “You will nevertheless comply.”
Constitution or no Constitution, Paul’s authority as a Special Agent was absolute, in any timeline. And the Terran Federation, by the law of temporal supersession, did not recognize the sovereignty of past nations. Simply put, if you and your descendants were to disagree, your descendants would always be right.
Clinton laughed, exasperated. “But I can’t. There’s no way I can do that. It just can’t be done.”
“You will comply,” Paul repeated, his gaze unyielding. “You have three days to implement a new Constitution. Failure to comply will be interpreted as an act of war against the Terran Federation.”
And then he left.