"Hey Lincoln!"

I turn to see Michael Parsels running across the street in my direction, hampered by his stiff and ruffled native dress. A horse-drawn cart swerves to narrowly avoid him, making the driver curse in such a thick English accent that I can barely make out the more colorful words. Parsels ignores the man and approaches me, studying my face closely.

I peel back the flesh-colored strip on my hand enough so he can see the active digital readout there. He performs the same manuever and then he's pushing the envelope at me. "I'm late, bye," he says in a rush, and runs off again.

I stand on the street nonchalantly, waiting for my contact. The people on the street begin give me a wide berth as they walk by, eyeing me and my gentlemen's clothes with varying reactions. Even the cleanest of the people look dirty to me. I hate the Victorian Age.

A man waves to me across the street and I draw my pistol, leveling at him. To all appearances, the gun is authentically in-period, but it's absolutely anything but. The man raises his hands and approaches me warily until I recognize him and lower my aim. It's Parsels again, but a younger, more innocent version of the man -- he's obviously downstream from me. "Are you Lincoln, sir?" he asks.

"Yeah," I say. He begins to show me his readout, but I stop him. "It's okay, kid." He takes the envelope from my hands and smiles as he waves goodbye, adding another 'sir' that makes me wince. Had Parsels ever really been that much of a suck-up?

My mission was accomplished, although the bank was shaved a little close for my comfort. What if Parsels had met himself -- even just seeing an upstream version of yourself can change things. A downstream Parsels would merely have to notice the upstream version no longer wore a wedding ring and Blam! Suddenly things aren't the way they used to be anymore, not that we'd even know the difference after the changes were made.

I holster my pistol now that I no longer have important information to protect and walk back to my hotel. About halfway there I notice I'm being tailed with some surprise.

Three choices: a native who thinks I'm his prey for some reason, an InClock agent keeping tabs on me, or a rogue agent doing the same. As I come to a busy thoroughfare I turn the corner and wait there for my pursuer to catch up, in case it's a rogue. Rogue agents have some interesting techniques that keep them out of InClock scrutiny and enable them to surprise us frequently. We have standing orders to capture them whenever possible so they can be pumped for information.

He rounds the corner and smiles, completely unsurprised. Like me, he's dressed in a gentleman's finery, but I'm not fooled; his face and hands are cleaner than any of the natives. "Let me see your display," I say.

"Hello," he replies. "I merely wished to speak to you for a moment. My name's..."

I interrupt. "Your display."

"A display? What are you going on about?"

I slit my eyes. "I'm not amused," I say. With a slight self-deprecating smirk he lifts his right hand and pulls back a piece of flesh-colored tape that matches his skin-color exactly.

Underneath it his display was dead and black.

"Rogue!" I exclaim softly.

"Yes, I'm rogue. 19A86."

I blink in surprise; he's considerably upstream from myself. "16E41," I reply, giving him a frame of reference.

His eyes widen. "Not 16E47?" he asks.

"No, why?"

"Calibration error," he explains with a frown. "I shouldn't be talking to you yet."

"You were going to attempt to recruit me? You shouldn't be talking to me at all then."

"Here," he says, changing the subject. He pulls out a small piece of in-period paper and with a modern inkpen he scrawls something on the back. "You'll know when to look at that. Keep it safe. Sorry for the confusion." He puts the inkpen away and gives me a friendly smile as he hands me the paper before he begins to walk away.

I almost stop him, words of arrest on my lips. I should apprehend him; it's my job. For some reason it feels wrong, though. He seemed to want to help me with something, but couldn't because our frames of references were out-of-sync. I decide to wait and see what happens. Logically the paper he gave me probably has another meeting time and place on it. I could apprehend him then, surely, if I wanted to.

I walked the rest of the way back to my hotel to wait for the Daze to bring me back upstream.

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