Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: Okay, another update after a horrendous case of writer's block! To reward all of my loyal readers, this will be at least a two chapter post. Please enjoy, and if you read all the way through, click on that little button down on the bottom left hand corner of the screen. The one that says "Review".
"The Diffy's shall be arriving soon, sir," Gibbons said from the doorway. Commander Wright was pondering over the holographic screen again, and his brow was furrowed in a worried expression. He didn't like the rate of disappearances. It had increased, the meter at the bottom of the screen indicated in bright red text, by thirty percent. If he wasn't careful, there would be no Diffy's left by the time they sent Mr. Diffy back to the twenty-first century. Erasing three entire branches of a family tree could have disastrous results on the time-line. It was like a nuclear bomb, ready to detonate and destroy the world at a moment's notice if it wasn't properly defused. Commander Wright tapped his foot on the ground.
"Sir?" Gibbons said tentatively, thinking perhaps the commander hadn't heard him. Commander Wright tore his eyes away from the screen and looked at Gibbons, as if he hadn't realized he was there, and had been standing there for the last five minutes.
"Yes, Gibbons?"
"We've received word that Mr. Diffy and his father are on their way," Gibbons said. Commander Wright nodded.
"Good, good," he muttered, turning back to the screen. Another name popped up, and then another, and then another. The dates were getting closer and closer to their own time, and no doubt that would cause a lot of rifts in the community. He paced in front of the screen, looking at his watch every now and then.
"Commander Wright?" an unrecognizable voice called tentatively from the doorway. Wright turned to find a middle-aged man in a jumpsuit standing just outside the room, looking at the technology in awe, and a younger man standing next to him. The younger looked as though he hadn't slept in days, though his demeanor told otherwise. Wright briefly wondered if he should have padded the room before inviting the Diffy's. The boy was about to fly apart at the seams at any moment. It was he who had addressed him.
"Commander Wright?" he repeated. Wright waved them in, and the boy happily acquiesced, pulling the older man by the sleeve into the room.
"Mr. Diffy," Commander Wright said. "Please sit down." He gestured to a couple of chairs in front of his desk, which was set up to the far right of the room. Both quickly sat down. The younger Diffy fiddled with his fingers anxiously and bit his lip, waiting for the Commander to respond.
"Mr. Diffy," both men looked pointedly at him. "Phillip. I've called you down here, as it said in the notice we sent you, because of a matter of international security."
"International security?"
"Yes. The time line was disrupted when you arrived back in this century. Disappearences have been happening in the years between your departure and the present. Usually, this is a routine occurrence. A person here or there goes missing, and normally the disappearances are not related." Commander Wright brought up the list of missing people that had been lengthening since he looked at it ten minutes ago. The hologram was projected behind his desk, and he moved to the one side of the screen to explain.
"This, however, is not normal," he gestured to the long list of names. "This started about a day after you returned to the present."
"But what's this got to do with me and my parents?" Phil asked, bemused.
"Not your parents, Mr. Diffy, just you,"
"Okay, just me then," Phil was even more confused now than he had been a moment ago.
"Mr. Diffy, you are married, are you not?"
"Of course I am," Lloyd answered, shooting a strange look at his son. "Phil wouldn't be here if I wasn't."
"Not you," Commander Wright pointed to Phil. "Him."
"Married? Phil?" Lloyd said, disbelievingly. "Of course not! He's just a kid. How or why in the world would he get married?" Phil fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat. Commander Wright's eyebrow shot up, giving him an inquisitive look.
"Come on, Phil," his father nudged him in the arm with his elbow. "Tell him how ridiculous that is." He turned back to the commander. "I thought you had the wrong guy, now I'm sure of it."
"Dad," Phil cut in, silencing him. He pulled out the necklace from beneath his shirt to show Wright. "Yes, I am."
"I thought so," Commander Wright gave a wide smile. "Then I assume you've figured out who the oldest disapearences are."
"Our children," Phil said in breathlessly, staring at the screen. "Mine...and Keely's." He gaped, open mouthed for a moment.
"Precisely," Commander Wright looked at the older Diffy, who was looking at his son as if he'd seen him for the first time. He picked up a pencil and twirled it in his fingers. "Phil, would you like to be able to see your wife again?"
"Y-yes," Phil faltered, barely able to get the words out for his excitement.
"That's good, because you're going to be able to," Commander Wright braced himself for the boy to spontaneously combust. "The time line must be corrected. A disruption this much could set a chain of events that could cause the next apocalypse. Therefore, we're not only asking you to leave, we're ordering you to leave."
"When?" was the only word Phil could choke out. He fiddled with the ring around his neck, as if by grasping it tightly it would transport him across a hundred and ten years or so.
"Well, that's the problem," Commander Wright grimaced, not exactly eager to burst the boy's bubble so quickly. Despite the rumors around the office, he did have emotions. "Because of the government's 'No Time Traveler Stranded' program, it's mandatory to bring all time travelers back to the present. The program has a two year lifespan, in which the government plans to bring everyone back. Until then, all time travel recreational vehicles that were not destroyed in the raid are being used for that, and therefore not available to us."
"Two years?" Phil could hardly believe it. He expected to be angry, but felt relieved that at least he was going back, unlike before. He could wait two years. He hoped.
"Yes, unfortunately," Wright turned back to the screen. "We can only hope that the timeline doesn't commit suicide before that time." Another name popped up, this one in the later part of the twenty-first century.
"Suicide?" the word sounded so...awful.
"With the so many people disappearing at one time, not only are families disrupted, but whole entire species. For example, if a person invented a vaccine for a world wide epidemic suddenly vanished, the epidemic could wipe out half the population of the earth. But that's not the worst of it.
"Time is always seeking to correct itself, Mr. Diffy. Always. It doesn't like it when people go missing, or something is out of the ordinary. However, time does not have the power to correct it simply by bringing back the element that disrupted it. In this case, that would be you. Instead, it compensates by correcting the population. Without you and your wife having those other children, their families, technically, do not exist.
"When Time is unable to correct it simply by altering a few lives, and the small equation turns into a complicated problem, it gives up. When Time gives up, that means it halts. The world and it's inhabitants cannot live in a world where time does not exist, for Time makes the plants and animals grow for sustanence, and humans grow as well. It also makes all of the chemical reactions in our body. Time is the catalyst of all things, and take away the catalyst of a reaction, you have no reaction at all.
"Time travel, as it works in the present, is dependant on a wormhole discovered by the third Hubble space probe sent out in 2098. Wormholes are rather like a tube, with at least two mouths connected to a throat. The wormhole we found contained several different mouths connected to a central throat. Got it? I know it's confusing. Each mouth connected to a different time period. For some reason, they all end in three..." Commander Wright stopped for a moment to ponder this, before realizing he hadn't finished his explanation as to why they had to get Phillip back to the twenty first century as soon as possible.
"Sorry. Wormholes are very unstable things. We've lost tons of men in our research lab because trying to go through one or two of the mouths cased a slightly bad reaction. Now, in this case, the disappearance of quite a few individuals has caused the wormhole to fluctuate badly. The 'No Time Traveler Stranded' campaign might not actually come to be if we don't send you back. When something in history changes, the mouth to that time period closes. Since our problem spans over quite a few time periods, many mouths of the wormhole have closed. This has caused the wormhole to become unstable. Because of the wormhole's size and proximity to our solar system and several neighboring ones, to cause it to become unstable signs our death warrant. When too many of the mouths close, the entire thing collapses, causing first a supernova, which eventually turns into a black hole. Both of which spell trouble for the human race.
"My job is to fix it before that happens. Which means we practically have to kick you out of your birth century, because of the implications of the situation. Two years, we hope, will be a short enough time to get the time travelers who have been proven to have no impact on history back to the present. As soon as a time machine is procured, you're gone. Did you get all that?" Phil nodded.
"So, two years," he repeated. The Commander nodded. He put down the pencil he'd been fiddling with.
"As a result, we'll be sending you back two years after you left. Any questions?"
"I guess not,"
"Good. When we procure a time machine, or something comes up, we'll be in touch," he led the Diffy's to the door, and scooted them out. He had the nagging feeling he was forgetting something, but couldn't remember what.
"Commander?" Gibbons asked from the other side of the room. Wright had forgotten he'd been there, checking the backgrounds on each new inductee to the infamous missing persons list.
"Yes, Gibbons?" the commander took a small bottle from his pocket, flipped off the top, and popped two cherry-flavored antacids into his mouth. He made a grimace as he chewed; no matter what the label said, they did not taste like cherries. All this stress was giving him an ulcer, or at least he thought so. He never went anywhere without antacids anymore. He turned towards Gibbons.
"Sir, you said we're sending him back two years after he left,"
"So I did, Gibbons. What's the problem?"
"His first child was born eight months after he left. That means when he goes back, his son will already be there,"
"And?"
"Don't you think we should prepare him for that?"
"We can't tell him anything, Gibbons. We've screwed up enough over the past two months. I don't want to screw up any more. Telling him could alter something. We're hanging by a thread as it is. He'll have to find out the hard way."
"But sir—"
"No, Gibbons. Now get back to work,"
A/N: Okay, I have no idea if that makes any sense. It made sense to me when I wrote it, but to you folks, I'm not sure. If you were confused, I'll be happy to answer any questions! And, just prolong things; we'll have one more chapter of filler before Phil comes back. But it will be cute, I promise.
