Short Fiction · Chapter
Police Operation explained
Tortha Karf and Verkan Vall review a database of strange events on a Fourth Level timeline, including unexplained fires, disappearances, and 'Flying Saucer' sightings linked to the Ardrath expedition's antigravity disks.
What happens
Tortha Karf and Verkan Vall review a database of strange events on a Fourth Level timeline, including unexplained fires, disappearances, and 'Flying Saucer' sightings linked to the Ardrath expedition's antigravity disks. They discuss the Paratime Police's role in suppressing public awareness and maintaining the secret of paratime transposition. Meanwhile, on the same timeline, game protector Steve Parker and state police investigate a series of animal attacks on livestock, with wounds suggesting a large predator or possibly a human with a blade. The chapter also includes a technical explanation of paratime theory, levels, sectors, and belts.
Themes in this chapter
Technology and Social Change
Paratime technology creates social disruptions (e.g., cigarette shortages, 'Flying Saucer' panics) that require police intervention to maintain secrecy.
Power and Corruption
The Paratime Police wield immense power to manipulate timelines and suppress information, raising questions about accountability and the ethics of their operations.
Alienation and Otherness
The mysterious animal attacks and the 'Flying Saucer' phenomena represent the intrusion of the unknown into everyday life, highlighting human alienation from forces beyond comprehension.
Characters to notice
- Tortha Karf
Reviews records of paratime incidents and discusses corrective actions with Verkan Vall.
- Verkan Vall
Inquires about the Ardrath matter and explains paratime theory to a pilot.
- John Strawmyer
Irate farmer reporting the killing of his heifer and dog by an unknown creature.
- Steve Parker
District game protector investigating the animal attacks and photographing evidence.
Key passages
“We’re jugglers, Vall; trying to keep our traders and sociological observers and tourists and plain idiots like the late Gavran Sarn out of trouble; trying to prevent panics and disturbances and dislocations of local economy as a result of our operations; trying to keep out of outtime politics—and, at all times, at all costs and hazards, by all means, guarding the secret of paratime transposition.”
Tortha Karf describes the Paratime Police as jugglers who must balance the activities of traders, observers, tourists, and fools like Gavran Sarn, while preventing panics, economic disruptions, and political entanglements, all to protect the secret of paratime travel.
Highlights the central conflict of the Paratime Police: maintaining secrecy while managing the fallout from cross-temporal interactions.
“The standard smother-out technique,” Verkan Vall grinned. “I only heard a little talk about the ‘Flying Saucers,’ and all of that was in joke. In that order of culture, you can always discredit one true story by setting up ten others, palpably false, parallel to it.”
Verkan Vall explains that the Paratime Police use a 'smother-out technique' to discredit genuine sightings by flooding the public with obviously false stories.
Illustrates the manipulative methods used to control public perception and hide paratime activity.