Department of Temporal Investigations: Watching the Clock

2017 | Fiction & Poetry

Temporal investigation is a thankless job. While Starfleet explorers get to live the adventure of traveling to other times and realities, it's up to the dedicated agents of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations to deal with the consequences to the timestream the rest of us have to live in day by day. But in a universe where history as we know it could be wiped out at any moment by time warriors from the future, misused relics of ancient races, or accident-prone starships, only the most disciplined, obsessive, and unimaginative government employees have what it takes to face the existential uncertainty of it all on a daily basis and still stay sane enough to do their jobs. That's where Agents Lucsly and Dulmur come in. These stalwart, unflappable investigators are the Federation's unsung anchors in a chaotic universe. Together with their colleagues in the DTI, and with the help and sometimes hindrance of Starfleet's finest, they do what they can to keep the timestream, or at least the paperwork, as neat and orderly as they are.

But when a series of escalating temporal incursions threatens to open a new front of the history-spanning Temporal Cold War in the twenty-fourth century, Lucsly and Dulmur will need all their investigative skill and unbending determination to keep the present and the future from falling into the kind of chaos they really, really hate.

Christopher L. Bennett (Author)