The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

made a fist. “We must act! Otherwise we’re damned to this miserable existence and the whims of Vice Governor Lokus and his troopers. Remember,” she added, quoting a Russian author dead some four hundred years, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
    “Oh, come on, Aurora,” Kyr chided. “Don’t be so melodramatic. If we do nothing, the worst case scenario is that things stay as they are now.”
    She turned to face him. “Exactly,” she said slowly. Kyr looked down at the table, embarrassed.
    “I beg to differ, Kyr,” Argus offered gently. “I do not believe the greatest danger lies in doing nothing. One worst case scenario, as you put it, is that we continue to defy the law until Lokus’s men hunt us down and imprison us, or worse. Another is that in our efforts to effect positive change, we initiate a temporal wave that so completely alters our present time that we cease to exist. Yet another is that meddling in our own past causes our present to be mutated into something unrecognizable—and even more intolerable than it already is. Personally, I am not willing to be responsible for any of those scenarios.”
    Argus hesitated before offering his opinion. “I believe we should entirely abandon our plans to send someone upstream. Collectively we have an immense amount of knowledge in the matter of temporal modification. I’m confident the Vice Governor would be lenient toward us if we turned ourselves in and offered to lend whatever assistance we can to the government’s efforts to improve society.”
    Val-Nar snorted in exasperation. “The government’s efforts, Argus, consist of doing exactly nothing.” She shrugged. “Why should they be interested in changing things when they already run the world? Why do you think they forbid upstream travel by anyone except themselves? So they can keep everything the way it is, of course!”
    Kyr seemed to recover from Aurora’s rebuff. He roughly pushed his chair back and stood up. “That’s just conjecture, Val-Nar. We cannot presume to understand all the government’s reasons for prohibiting time travel. What we can understand is its desire to preserve the enclaves of civilization that remain, and its unwillingness to risk the loss of those areas to the backward and uneducated masses.”
    Lucinda tiredly ran a hand over her face. “Kyr, you were born into this society. You grew up controlled by this government. You're only… what, fifty? You're too young to know how it used to be. My friends,” she offered, “look around you. We’re already renegades, shunned by our peers and persecuted by our government for daring even to discuss changing the past. Yet we bequeath to our children a world ruled by a military dictatorship. We, the technologically literate, are coddled from cradle to grave by intelligent but indifferent machines that serve us well but do nothing to improve our minds, our bodies, or our society.”
    Her voice quavered as she continued. “This is not the earth of the early two thousands, when man was simply more stupid than malicious. Now our once-beautiful planet is bursting with overpopulation, scarred by constant war, disease, and famine, fouled with the ambitions of an uncaring, unscrupulous cartel of so-called leaders whose only thoughts are for the preservation of their crumbling empire.”
    She paused, sadly drew a breath. “I say we must do whatever it takes, whatever the consequences, to change this world. Whether that change turns out to be for the better,” her gaze circled the table, met everyone’s eyes in turn, “or worse.”
    After a thoughtful silence, Denes returned to the discussion. “Well said, all. However, regardless of our individual opinions, it is clear that further delay only increases our vulnerability.” He turned to his oldest and dearest friend. “Borok, I believe we should vote now and act quickly one way or the other. Who knows when our secrecy may be compromised?” There was general assent.
    “About that there can be no doubt,” Borok agreed solemnly. “One day there will be a knock at the door and the entire discussion will be moot.”
    There was no knock.
    In the next terrible instant, an armored Federal Police cruiser crashed through Borok’s residence wall. Engine roaring and siren wailing, it spat out three heavily armed, black-suited troopers. On each breastplate shone a silver, stylized “L”, the symbol of the Western Region’s Vice