TimeControl Commander Jessica Haverton floated gruffly in the tank that acted as her command chair, situated at the head of the Briefing Room table. Four tentacle-arms grasped the upper edge of the tank, three undulated slowly around her, and one scratched lightly at the two eyestalks that protruded into the air of the room.

“This mission includes double hazard pay”, she told the assembled operatives. “Plus a retirement bonus — 10-years early retirement.”

Everyone in the room knew that those two incentives combined meant the mission included causing the death of a sentient person. Various biological vision apparatuses focused nervously at Haverton. Legally, no one could be assigned to such a mission; it required volunteers.

“We’re looking at timeline 614T”, she announced, her voice calmer than she felt.

Every operative knew a letter suffix meant an artificial timeline branch.

“That’s right”, she went on, “someone fiddled. The mission is twofold. Neutralize the branch catalyst and apprehend anyone responsible.”

“What was the catalyst?” an operative asked from the end of the table.

Commander Haverton’s eyestalks twisted sternly toward the interruption. “Feel free to assume that immediately after mentioning a branch catalyst I will explicitly state the nature of said catalyst. Asking a question that I am clearly about to answer is not only a waste of your time and energy, but annoying to everyone who has to hear this little speech again.”

The operative gulped, abashed.

Haverton raised her body higher out of the water, her free tentacle-arms quivering with nervous energy.

“I would volunteer, but the branch occurred on the human homeworld Earth many years before their contact with the rest of us. It has to be a human. Non-humans are only approved for support and observation.”

At this, two non-humans left the room, dejected. Two others volunteered for S/O roles, after negotiating half-hazard pay for it.

“Now, the catalyst”, Haverton said. “An unauthorized person was inserted into Timeline 614, causing the T-branch. The human wasn’t inserted in the usual way — traveling there via time portal. This is a curious case in which the person, who we call ‘T‑prime’, was caused to be born there. Originally, T‑prime’s mother fell ill — in the decade locally known as the 1940s — and was unable to conceive further children. Our meddlers slipped in with modern technology, preventing or curing this illness, thus allowing the birth.

“As you know from TimeControl Academy, 99.99% of timeline branches are only temporary. Most ‘butterfly effects’ are insignificant ripples causing tiny changes which eventually self-correct. The branches merge back into the originals. But this is the zero-point-zero-one percent they don’t talk about much. We have followed 614T forward several generations and it shows no sign of merging back on its own; the changes turn out to be significant — some of them astounding and disgusting.”

Haverton paused and looked around the room. The remaining humans were listening with rapt attention, eyebrows raised, bodies leaning forward.

“Don’t ask me how, because I don’t pretend to understand the particular culture and asinine legal system that allowed it, but T‑prime failed his way into leadership. He failed at several business enterprises to become wealthy, failed at most personal relationships to end up with a large and loyal family, and failed in all elections in order to become head of the most powerful government body in his time.

“Acceptable outcomes include terminating the mother before T‑prime is viable, or terminating T‑prime prior to T-branch stabilization. Any questions?”

“Won’t our interference simply create 614U — another artificial branch?” asked the newest operative.

Some of the others winked or smirked at each other. Haverton waggled her eyestalks, which they knew was a negative.

“Technically, yes. However, since 614T itself isn’t considered stable during T‑prime’s childhood, any ending of him drastically increases the chances of 614T collapsing back into 614. And thus our secondary artificial timeline collapses back as well. And since ours was approved, it doesn’t get its own name — as long as it does merge back. Our mathematicians assure me that it’s better to negate the branch catalyst as early as possible — either pre-birth or immediately thereafter. If we don’t terminate T‑prime until adulthood, for example, there are stronger chances of producing a permanent 614U alongside the permanent 614T.”

Another human operative raised a hand. “Like everyone else here, I have a firm grip on history, but none of us are experts in every timeline. A little background might be in order.”

Operative Aaak Labront, recently promoted from the Division of Observation (DO), spoke up: “The 600-series timelines are outliers anyway, according to current time theory. They’re characterized by the lack of the Galactic Federation. Most of them include a human nation called the ‘United States’, usually ‘of America’, which was almost never a good thing. In Timeline 614, the U.S.A. was particularly offensive.” He turned to Haverton. “What is the real concern for trying to fix any of this?”

Haverton snorted out her rear blowhole.

“It’s our mission”, she stated plainly. “If people naturally born into a timeline cause their own suffering or that of others, we document it, track it, and stay out of it. We learned this the hard way, early in TimeControl’s existence, when we tried to kill General Kondat as an infant. But when consequences are inflicted upon them by outside sources — when someone with time travel technology introduces changes that increase suffering — it is our duty to stop it.”

Labront leaned forward. “Obviously I haven’t studied 614T — because I only just now heard of it — but 614 itself was pretty bad. Just about any change could have made it better.”

“What was so bad about it?” another operative called out.

“For one thing, they allowed chattel slavery much later than other timelines”, Labront said. “And when the U.S.A. finally did end slavery they failed to guarantee human rights to former slaves or their descendants. They were just as slow to grant rights to women, and even slower to legally recognize or protect anyone outside a narrow band of sex and gender options — or anyone not part of the dominant religion. This went on well after the development of space travel.

“I wrote my thesis on Timeline 614, okay? A few hundred years after the part we’re discussing, humans discovered the other sentient species and warred against them too. The Lozzia, for example, were wiped out by humans.” He looked pointedly at Haverton, who had been born on Lozz.

Haverton took a breath, then said, “Operative Labront is correct of course. However, the T-branch inflicts much worse, for much longer. Timeline 614 reflects poorly on humanity, yes, but they do eventually get better. Though they retain their primitive brutality well into their Information Age and carry it into space with them, they do eventually lose it. After the genocide of the Lozzia, humanity begins to calm. But 614T goes darker. We have DO recordings of children ripped from their parents’ arms and locked in cages — apparently for being born in the wrong location, government-sanctioned murder of harmless civilians, and a kleptocracy that brought down the U.S.A. well before its time. It results in chaos that nearly wipes out the human species. All of this caused by the insertion of T‑prime.”

Labront looked worriedly around the room. “I’m not volunteering”, he said. “And I would encourage any of you with brown skin to opt out as well. They killed people like me just for walking the streets or shopping at stores.”

More eyebrows raised around the table.

“That’s right”, he said. “The DO has lists of thousands of citizens gunned down, strangled with ropes, or otherwise killed mainly due to the color of their skin. A startling number of the killers were government employees. Most of these deaths were tacitly approved by the government of the time. Some of them were tortured for days. Look at my skin”, he said, holding up his hands. “Hazard pay isn’t enough for that risk. And I’m not enough of a hero to risk it.”

He walked out.

Haverton watched the other human faces process this latest information. All Lozzia were entirely gray in outer coloring so they couldn’t grasp the human history of color-based division. She knew the remaining operatives were now accessing their brain-assist implants for more history on the 600-series timelines, and particularly 614.

“Check near P.F. 1500”, she said. “Locally, they call it the 20th Century of the Christian Era.”

“There’s a disturbing amount of child abuse”, one operative said, his eyes unfocused as his brain absorbed information from his implant. “Apparently it was legal for decades after T-prime was born.”

“We see this a lot in timelines where religion persisted into the Industrial Age”, Haverton explained. “It eventually fades away. Besides, none of you are children.”

“Labront was right”, said Operative Balina Tills. “I’ve found the lists of government-murdered brown-skinned people. I’m barely tan, but... I’m also a woman. It says here women couldn’t even own property without a man to co-sign for it? They were forced to act as brood mares for the men? What are the chances I would get away clean from this mission in such a society? Not great. From everything I see here, the most probable outcome is I get raped; if I surive that, I’ll be forced to bear the rapist’s child.”

She too left.

“There’s a whole section here on ‘white supremacy’, as practiced by the government of 614’s United States”, another operative said. “Almost none of us would be able to slip in undetected.”

They began to cast glances at the palest operatives in the room.

Operative Twain Jerbis, who had very pale skin, shook their head. “They weren’t too keen on my kind either”, they said. “Neither my sex nor gender are, shall we say, ‘traditional’. The DO files have plenty of instances of people like me being wantonly beaten or killed. Though many iterations of the U.S.A. became welcoming, accepting places, the one in Timeline 614 was very strict on what it allowed to exist. I would be spotted in a second.”

“Maybe I can go?" said Operative Game Thron. “It’s true I’m a woman. But if all I have to do is walk the streets and kill this T‑prime as a child, I think I can get away with it.”

Haverton uttered a high-pitched sound; to humans it was similar to a squeaky fart; the operatives knew that Lozzia used the sound to indicate wry humor. “I’m sending you a file”, she told Thron.

Thron’s eyes widened as she read the report with her implant. “Oh, I guess not.”

“What is it?” someone else asked.

“My facial tattoo”, she said, tapping her right cheek. “It’s merely my school ID number from college. But apparently in Timeline 614, almost no tattoos were acceptable during the pertinent decades, certainly not for women. And none on the face. Also, there was a quaint superstition about a series of three sixes. They believed the numerals were ‘from the devil’, whatever that means. Looks like I’d be burnt at the stake. Or at the very least I’d be unable to operate clandestinely.”

“What a weird place”, another operative said.

“That only leaves you”, Haverton said to Operative Nix Aluva.

Aluva nodded. “I’ve catalogued as many things they hate as I can. I don’t think there’s anything obvious about me that will set anyone off. I present as male, my skin is pale, and I’m tattoo-free. I’ll do it. I need a few hours for my implant to teach me the accent and slang of the 20th Century.”

***

“What happened?” Thron asked at the next meeting. “Where’s Aluva?”

“We’re still trying to figure it out”, Commander Haverton replied. “The support-and-observation team reported Aluva was surrounded by a band of human youths shouting words, including ‘Mongoloid’ and ‘retard’ just before he was beaten and left in an alley. The latter makes no sense; Aluva wasn’t slowing anything. We’re still checking whether he had any connection to the Mongol Empire, which I doubt. Anyway, a passerby took him to one of their primitive hospitals, where he contracted an infection and died before we could retrieve him. More research is being conducted into what it was about Aluva that upset them so.”

“Maybe it should be you after all, Commander”, Jerbis said. “Perhaps you won’t set off as much hate as any of us.”

A nervous laugh went around the room.

“You’ve been on missions to human-only worlds before”, Tills reminded her. “How did you do it?”

“It didn’t matter in those cases”, Haverton admitted. “All four involved remote locales, where the only people who would see me were people I’d end up killing or capturing. The current mission, though, is in one of the most crowded cities of that timeline. No way to avoid being seen by hundreds, if not thousands of people. Mere reports of my appearance might cause another artificial timeline branch.”

“You look enough like one of their existing sea creatures that they’d probably just think you escaped from a zoo or something. Remember? In 614, humans were still capturing and enslaving other animals.”

Haverton’s eyestalks bobbled up and down slowly. “If you want something done right, do it yourself...”

***

T‑prime, age 12, tapped on the glass. Fellow school children mingled around him at the city’s aquarium. On the other side of the transparent partition, a variety of creatures swam or floated in bluish water. An octopus stared back at him. A mutant octopus, according to the placard, which T‑prime had ignored because he couldn’t read.

The small placard added that it was the only octopus ever found (1) with eyestalks, and (2) surviving so far from water. If T‑prime could read, he would have seen it was found seven years earlier, less than a kilometer from his home.

“Dumb octopus!” he exhaled, turning away.

T‑prime did not see the mutant octopus hold up three tentacle-arms and cross them to form an asterisk, nor would he have known how offensive the gesture was on the planet Lozz. Instead, he punched a classmate in the spine and convinced others to laugh about it.