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quietly escaped his lips. The room was packed and busy, with hideous olive green partitions separating the space into small cubicles. The soft hum of office machinery hung gently in the background, like an army of bees working cautiously.
    As they approached Bob's cubicle, he didn't see them until the last minute. With a shocked expression he greeted his brother, and his friend. “Aren't you on vacation man? What are you doing here? I'm working. Oh hey if you wanna hang out tonight I'd love to but I can't. I'm hanging out with the other you!” He let loose a hearty chuckle.
    That was Bob, always laughing. Garrulous, even with people he didn't know. It was a gift that won him more than his share of ladies, and was something Jack had always been jealous of. Anisha introduced herself and Bob thought back to years ago, vaguely remembering her as Jack's friend. He was about to start some more joking but a quick look at their sober faces swayed him against it. 
    After some more light banter, a very serious Jack asked Bob to come with them into the elevator. Crossing the vast corporate jungle they got in and the pair began to explain what was going on. This was no easy task since they themselves weren't entirely sure. As if to drive the point home, once they were done, Bob too looked worried.
    “And you have no idea who these people are?”
    “None at all.”
    “We can't go to the police either,” chimed in Anisha. “We have to work this out ourselves.”
    Hearing his brother was in trouble, Bob was more than eager to help. The elevator reached floor twenty-seven, Criminalistics. As they got out, they walked into a huge cave-like computer room, ominously signposted as 'The Main Hive.' There were security guards all around them, six in total, all dressed in standard cyan uniforms with their badges clearly visible. From their rigid pose and serious gaze, as well as their advancing age, Jack, guessed they were ex-members of the TPU - the Time Police Unit.
    The TPU had been a government plan to reduce crime by sending agents back in time after a crime had occurred, in a bid to spy on the suspects and the victim and thus work out who was responsible. Unfortunately higher arrest rates didn’t act as the deterrent the government was hoping for, and the cost of finding and hiring all those agents and as well as the price of their constant time travelling, was enough to effectively terminate the project.
    As the pair followed Bob into the room on the right, they found themselves enclosed by lab rats. Jack wagered that every single person in this room had at least a degree in Temporal Sociology and probably a lot more besides. Jack had never been the brightest at school and all he knew about time travel was the bare minimum. Given how much it had hurt his head learning the very basics at college, he was in no way curious, nor eager to learn anymore.
    Bob showed the others down several white, maze-like corridors. After checking that no-one was watching, they went past a swipe card door and entered a new set of corridors, these ones with black, claustrophobic walls.
    Walking along, Jack pondered the inevitability of his fate and thought about the cardinal rule of time travel. When you go back in time you can't cause any new major events or stop any major ones from occurring. Jack was pretty sure his death was a major event, at least to him. Even if he did what was being asked of him, was he still going to die?
    His stream of thought was interrupted by a tug from Anisha, pulling him into a small side room with Bob. In front of them was a dark blue access terminal.
    “We better be quick. We’re not supposed to be down here without my supervisor knowing.“
    In the interests of public privacy, government fingerprint archive terminals all required two passwords, hence the need to rope in Bob. Fluttering around, the pair of security experts hurriedly began looking through files while a nervous Jack stood watch, sweating and struggling to