July 24, 1999, San Francisco, Earth
8:24 PM
They were sitting on a worn wooden bench at the top of a high cliff, overlooking the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean as the sun set over a calm, shimmering sea. The summer evening was warm and pleasant, and the gentle breeze brought with it the salty fragrance of the ocean. Overhead, seagulls circled, looking for a place to nest for the night.
"I still can’t believe it," Ellie said, her voice tinged with disbelief. “I mean I do believe it, of course. I just… can’t believe it, if you know what I mean.” She was new to this, and didn't quite know the right words to express her thoughts and feelings.
“Of course,” Paul answered patiently. “I wouldn’t expect anything else. Take your time to adjust.”
“I’ve had a whole life before this one,” Ellie continued, her eyes fixed on the horizon, “and I lived it in the future, no less.” She felt frustrated. “It’s mind-boggling. And I can’t remember it, except for fragments and dreams.”
“So little of your brain was intact when you arrived here. Whoever sent you must have been very thorough. All that was left of your memories from your life as a Sunguard Special Agent were scattered pieces of your most intense memories. As you regenerated from those few intact cells, you grew into a child. When your brain started to mature, it tried to make the best sense of those memories, but without context, it all became a jumbled mess of intense feelings and flashes of events from your old life.”
“I wish I knew what happened to me.” Her voice hardened. “Someone did this. They should not get away with it.”
“I completely agree,” Paul responded. “But there’s another aspect of this we should keep in mind as well. We know who you were. We can read your unique identity from the code in your cells. We know you were sent on a mission to the planet Gloria in the Procyon system to dismantle a large-scale narcotics ring. What we don’t know is what you found out - who was running the operation, where exactly they were based, what contacts they had. It was four decades ago, but given the size of their operation back then, I’d wager they’re still around, and probably larger than ever. Your mission still stands. We need to dismantle them, and only you have the knowledge to do that.”
"Except I don’t!" Ellie said, her voice rising in frustration.
“That’s not quite true,” Paul answered calmly. “We do have your memories. We just can’t read them. They’re stored in the Sunguard Memory Repository, a backup of the memories of all Special Agents to safeguard against precisely the kind of thing that happened to you on Gloria. But they’re formatted for your specific, individual brain structure. We can’t just go into the memory repository and read your memory backup. Only Ellie McBrian’s brain can make sense of Ellie McBrian’s memories. Well, you weren't called Ellie back then, but I think you get my point.”
Ellie was dumbfounded. Could her memories still be intact after all these years?
“You mean, I can get my memories back? How?”
“Normally, you’d already have them back. Your brain is designed to automatically connect to the Memory Repository once it’s grown or healed enough to receive the full set of memories. It’s just that when you regrew, you were here, in a secondary, alternate timeline. There’s no Sunguard Memory Repository here, no endpoint for the connection your brain has been trying to automatically establish since you grew up.”
She felt hope slowly fade away again. “So my memories are there. But I can’t get them back since I’m here,” she said, her voice low with frustration.
“Well, almost,” Paul said with a slight smile. “You can’t get them back automatically. Emphasis on automatically. Your brain doesn’t know where you are in three-dimensional time - not the exact coordinates. It can’t find the future point on the primary timeline where the Repository sits.” Paul shifted on the bench to look directly at her. “The backup and restoration process happens through hyperspace. You could do it from here, just as you could from the future. However, without knowing precisely where in time you are, your brain has been unable to automatically perform the restoration process. But I know exactly where we are, and I could easily transfer those coordinates to you. You could then initiate the restoration process with just a thought.”
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Elle felt excited. She really would be able to reclaim the memories of her past life! But then, a thought occurred to her.
“What would happen with the memories from my time here, then?” she asked, her voice hesitant.
“I’m afraid you’d lose them all.” Paul sounded apologetic now. “The restoration process is, by necessity, all-encompassing. It just overwrites your current memories with those stored in the Repository. Since we can’t interpret your memories in the Repository, we can’t pick and choose what to restore. It’s all or nothing, I’m afraid.”
Ellie felt a sinking sensation as despair crept back in. “So I’m either a Sunguard agent, or I’m Ellie McBrian. But I can’t be both,” she said, her voice thick with sadness.
“I’m sorry, Ellie. That’s the way it has to be. The only way we could pick out only selected memories from your Repository is one I will not allow.”
Annoyance flared within her. Now she felt not just disappointed, but a little angry, too. Who was he to decide about her memories?
“So there is a way, then?” she said.
“Technically, yes,” Paul answered. “You’re a Sunguard Special Agent. You have the right to know, of course. Hypothetically speaking, we could copy your genetic code, use it to grow a new biotic brain with your exact brain structure, download the memories into that brain, and then ask it to provide the specific memories we’re looking for. It would work, but I will not allow it.” Paul’s tone grew firm, leaving no room for debate. A biotic brain was a living, conscious individual. To him, it was not a tool to be used and discarded.
“So I’ll lose all my memories. My parents, Sally, they’ll all be gone. Do I even have a choice?” she blurted.
“Of course you have a choice. You’re not a slave to the Sunguard. You’re a Special Agent, that’s true, and that can never change, because it’s in your genes; it’s how you were designed. But you’re not a thing - you’re not owned by the Sunguard.” He spoke gently but with conviction.
She scoffed. “What, so it’s just a job? Like, I’m getting paid for it?”
Paul laughed, the sound mixing with the thunder of crashing waves far below. Being a Sunguard Special Agent wasn’t quite like flipping burgers at McDonald’s.
“No. No, it’s not really like that. The Sunguard provides for you. It’s more that you don’t actually need money. If there’s something you need, as a Sunguard Special Agent, you have the authority to simply take it.”
“Stealing for the Sunguard?” she snorted. She had to admit, she found the idea rather amusing, in a ridiculous way.
Paul laughed again, in that kind way of his. “Oh, no!” he said. “As a Sunguard Special Agent, you have the authority to decide what is legal and what isn't. If you take something and deem it legal for you to take it, then by definition, it's not theft.” He realized how foreign the concept must be to her, to empower a being with that kind of authority.
“So if I’m not property of the Sunguard, I can just walk away. They’d allow me to do that?”
“Well, it has happened before. Not often, but it has,” Paul replied, as he remembered friends long gone. “Besides, it’s not like they could do anything to stop you if you did. But… they wouldn’t have to. You would probably never want to leave. Like I said, being a Sunguard Special Agent is in your genes. Think of it like this: a biological person has to breathe. But that doesn’t make them a slave to oxygen. Breathing isn’t their job - it’s just something they do because breathing is part of who they are.”
Ellie tried to make sense of the analogy. “It’s the same thing with us,” Paul continued. “Being a Sunguard Special Agent is something we desire. It’s like we have this Sunguard-shaped hole in our souls, and only by being Special Agents can we fill it. We yearn for order, for control, for justice, for safety, for the law. Haven’t you felt it? The desire to make the world a better place for others. To protect those who can’t protect themselves. To stop those who are about to do wrong before they can even start. The Sunguard is the only place where we can do that, the only place where that yearning can reach fulfillment.”
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July 25, 1999, Sacramento, Earth
9:44 AM
For the first time in seemingly endless months, she had slept peacefully. Oh, the vivid dreams had been there. But they hadn’t felt like nightmares, despite their violence and intensity. She understood them now. She didn’t remember more than before, but now she truly understood.
And she had made her choice.
With the slightest flick of a thought, she initiated a direct radio connection to Paul.
“You told me I had a choice.” she said. “A choice between remaining Ellie McBrian in 1999 or becoming a Sunguard Special Agent in the distant future, losing all my memories of Ellie in the process.”
“Well, I am a Sunguard Special Agent. And with the authority vested in me, I declare that I do not have to make that choice.”
“Instead I choose, willingly, to follow you to the future and take on my role as a Special Agent for the Sunguard, to uphold the law and protect the citizens of the Terran Federation from threats, from within and from without. But I also choose to do this without restoring my old memories.”
“I am Ellie McBrian, Sunguard Special Agent. Daughter of Roger and Eva. Best friend of Sally.”
“Bad guys, beware the wolf!”