Dream Log: Time-Machine Secret Agents

Last night I dreamed that I was in the future, and there were time machines, but time travel was much more problematic than many had thought. Specifically, it was much more difficult than many had thought to change the past. The more significant the results of the intended change would be, the harder it was to make the change. It was as if 1) history wanted to remain the same, and 2) it knew your intentions. Let's take everyone's favorite example, going back in time to kill Hitler. If you went to Vienna in 1910 with the intent of killing the young Hitler, chances are that a falling piano would kill you within seconds of your exiting the time machine.

It was a drab and dilapidated future, generally speaking. Most of my dream took place within a huge mall, the size of a major international airport. Most of it was empty space between the stores. Most of the stores resembled half-deserted warehouses which were themselves mostly empty. There was a lot of dingy linoleum and tacky fake-woodgrain wall paneling.

I was a secret agent, with most of my assignments relating to the time machines, which governments and large corporations were still trying to keep secret. I don't know what government or other entity I was working for. I was waiting in the mall to meet another agent. It was going to be our first meeting, and we were going to make some repairs on a time machine hidden in an actual warehouse in back of one of the stores.

Just before I met this agent, I received a phone call telling me that she was a double agent working for our enemy. My assignment was to send her on a time-travel trip somewhere far into the past. Like Stone Age-far. It wasn't yet known what her mission was, so I should be prepared to fight for my life.

She was short and pudgy, she had short hair, one of her eyes seemed to be permanently crossed. Right away I felt more sorry for her than concerned for my own safety. I reminded myself that some extremely dangerous agents deliberately cultivated such a harmless appearance, the better to catch their enemies unawares.

We walked about a mile through the mall. To my great surprise, and, it appeared, also to hers, the time machine was not in the warehouse. I called HQ -- they, too, seemed very surprised. I was instructed to try to keep the double agent from leaving, and await further instructions.

I treated us to lattes at a coffee stand outside the mall. We were downtown in a big city, but the place was not crowded, and there were tall weeds everywhere.

I thought to myself that if her sad-sack routine was just an act, then she was a very good actor. I was tempted to tell her that I knew she was a double-agent, and to go ahead and beat it. But a limousine pulled up, one of my superiors, who looked a little bit like Dean Norris,

opened the back door and motioned for me, just me, to get in. So I said goodbye to the double agent with the crossed eye and got into the limousine.

My superior apologized, I asked what he was apologizing for, and he said, "She's one of their top killers. We didn't know that, or we would've pulled you sooner. Her assignment was to pump you for information and then kill you. Did you give her any intel?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Other than where the time machine was supposed to be."

"No, that was part of their story. Maybe they hoped to get you talking in a dark corner of the warehouse, so the killing would be better hidden. Good thinking, getting the coffee."

"No, not good thinking. I was just jonesing for coffee."

"You're sure you didn't tell her anything."

"Positive. I was tempted to tell her I knew she was a double agent, and she should call it a day. I didn't realize she was the dangerous one. That eye..."

"Looked like a crossed eye?"

"Yeah."

"It's a lens, for long range shooting, made to look like a crossed eye to get sympathy."

"Wow. Almost worked."

"Yeah," my boss said. "Like I said, she's one of their best ones."

And then I woke up.