By Denis Gagné – Flash Science Fiction (654 words)
I was called to my supervisor’s office so quickly after my return to the present that I didn’t have the time to remove my black cloak and facial prosthetics. What a sight it must have been as I poked my head in her office when she said, “Come in”.
“Hello Terry,” said Katherine sitting behind her desk and looking official in her grey pantsuit, “Or what did you go by this time around?”
“I didn’t have the moment for introductions this time, but I was going to call myself Edlem,” I said as I swept my cloak aside to sit more comfortably facing her.
Kat winced, then smiled.
“Oof, probably for the best you didn’t get too personal with a name like that,” she said.
“May I?” I asked with my fingertips standing at the ready to rip my fake white beard off. She was looking at a folder with the reference number for the mission I had just completed.
“No actually,” she said, looking up at me, a 35-year-old man dressed as a wizined hermit, “You’re going back to 1215 AD.”
“It didn’t work this time,” I said, nauseous at the thought of entering that cursed portal, “Just like all the other times. Giving a peasant a gun isn’t enough. I can give them a T-34 and they’d be no further ahead. Revolutionary violence isn’t enough to dismantle the system designed for their oppression.”
A thick soupy silence formed as Katherine closed the folder. She reached for a drawer at her desk and I panicked.
“But I’m only paraphrasing Einstein’s crap about failure and repetition,” I babbled on, “But what did he know? It’s not like he did like Tesla and figured out time travel, right? I’d be more than happy to find a peasant to try and start a revolt from the ground up elsewhen. Maybe a disgruntled dockhand or a barmaid could make some headway during the Renaissance with a Beretta or Kalashnikov…”
Sensing the panic in my voice, her eyes darted to me with a queer regard. She raised her free hand in a gesture of peace.
“Simmer down Terry,” she said still rooting around in her drawer, “Ah here it is.”
She pulled out a small red booklet and offered it to me.
“Is this what I think it is?” I said, curling my lip to a smirk.
“Did you think I was going to obliterate you?” she said, “Here? In my office?”
I blushed with embarrassment in response.
“We’ve lost sight of our purpose since starting ‘Project: Spartacus Spring’ and the Council has voted to correct course,” she said as she reached over her desk and tapped the little red book, “We’ve caught wind of a monastery in 13the century Scotland who have grown thankfully disillusioned with the Church’s material wealth. They’re popular with the locals and are quite engaged in helping the poor materially. Your mission, as if you have any choice, is to educate these functionally literate monks on the ways of Mao Zedong. We’re going to put the horse before the cart this time.”
“Don’t you think Proudhon might be better?” I asked, “You know he had a bit more regional knowledge compared to Zedong.”
“The Council debated it and decided on Zedong,” said Kat, “He’s more concise and a better handle on the peasantry.”
Katherine sat back in her chair looking rather pleased. I soaked in what I was just told. Looking over the pamphlets on her office sideboard: “Do You Want to Form a Vanguard Party?”, “How to Engage in Mutual Aid?” or “Planned Economy: Centralized or No?”, I wondered why this painfully obvious tactic wasn’t thought of earlier. Far less bloody, but then again, I’m not at the top nor the bottom of these societies, I’m only putting myself in the middle.
“I’m to start a reading club?” I said, stroking my fake white beard.
Katherine nodded.
“A reading club.”
THE END.
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