“You all know why you’re here,” Royce said, his voice bringing everyone in the room to attention. “Each of you has your reasons, but we’re not here to discuss that. We have been presented with a problem. End Times level problem. All of you have been selected for your expertise in one facet or another to address this problem.”

“Land the plane, man. What’s the problem?” a younger man asked. His head was shaved, and had a tattoo on his neck that indicated his time in a penal colony.

“Fuck you, Cade,” Royce replied. He held the younger man’s gaze for a moment in a show of dominance. There was history between them on some level, and the room grew a little more uncomfortable for the other people there. “The problem is,” he continued, finally breaking his glare to look at the others, “our world is, in fact, ending. Projections give us approximately seven days before we hit the PNR of a world ending catastrophe.”

“PNR?” one of the men asked, leaning on the table as they conversed. He looked to Royce then the others for clarification, his eyes curious, not apologetic.

“Point of no return,” said the towering brute of a man on the other side of Cade. “Basically, it means, we can’t stop it past that point, no matter what.”

“Okay, so what is the problem, exactly?” one of the women asked, leaning on the table, looking through the documents provided.

“Reality is breaking, is the short answer.” Royce looked at the people opposite him a moment before he punched keypad and brought up a hologram of three different maps. Pins on each mapped to a related place on another map, and each had shifting color arrangements that grew or shrunk with the preceding marker. “A group of radicals along with a few rogue scientists have made off with some technology that is interfering with the stability of the space-time continuum. For us, that means reality is fractured, the cracks spreading with every passing moment. On the bigger scale, it means that the time-stream is splitting, creating divergences in dimensions. Different worlds of possibility.”

“You mean, there’s a world out there where this prick isn’t a criminal?” another woman asked, elbowing Cade’s arm. He smiled in reply and shrugged his shoulders.

“Yes, actually,” Royce said matter-of-factly. “But as entertaining as that sounds, it’s creating more problems. Contrary to what we want from the expansiveness of the universe, the more divergences that are created, the more realities there are fighting for the same space in the time-stream. Everyone wants to be first place.”

“And there’s no second place, is there,” a comment more than a question.

“So that’s the problem. Two of them really. Either reality tears itself apart, or we get erased from existence.” Royce looked at everyone a brief moment to see if they all were paying attention so far. “Okay? Good. So, how are you supposed to fix it? We’ve been given advanced prototypes of a personal time travel apparatus being developed by the same company that had rogue scientists. We can’t jump different worlds and realities, so our next shot is going back in time to stop it.”

“That’s all? Why the seven day doomsday clock?” the towering man asked.

“That’s not all, actually. We need to repair the damages done in our timeline by these radicals, piece by piece. If we just go back to stop them from starting the damages, those other timelines still exist and still compete with our own, even if our world looks seemingly fixed. ‘The Paradox Competition’, as it’s been labeled, is still in play.”

“That is a lot of conjecture and embellishment covering up facts of history. How do we know if we’ve actually fixed the issue, and stopped another timeline from being created? Would we know?” asked the woman at then end of the group.

Royce shrugged. “We don’t. Not in practice, anyway. What we can do is back-trace the movements of all the rogue agents and determine their damages based on the immediate circumstances. The technology they stole is still feeding signals back to the quantum processor in the facility it was housed in, and as a research project, it’s keeping active logs of all uses. So, in theory, we should be able repair all the damages done if we pick those off one by one. Then, once those are all fixed, we stop the rogue agents from stealing the tech in the first place.”

The woman reading the documents set them down and looked up at Royce. “How do we know that won’t cause it’s own paradox?”

Royce looked back at her, slightly resigned. “Honestly, we don’t. It’s a calculated risk.” He looked back at everyone at the table. “Listen, I won’t lie to you, this sucks out loud, but the clock is ticking. We’ve modified the prototypes you’re using to allow for communication, using the same quantum processors that are recording the logs, which means you’ll also have real-time access to those as well.”

There was a cold silence in the room. Even Cade couldn’t crack a joke, his face showing real concern for the job ahead.

“Expect this to get dicey at the drop of a hat. We’ll keep everyone up to date as things get resolved, or new variables enter the equation. In the meantime, head to the launch bay and get set up. Good luck.”