57. The Pastronaut.

Glen Mower was joined in the office he was starting to consider his own by the brilliant CEO of The History Maintenance Commission Professor Delphi. Everything about his presence oozed confidence both in manner as well as the unprecedented intellectual capacity he had at his disposal.

Although the tale of the tape recorded him at well over six feet, every inch impressively turned out in the most sophisticated of apparel and pampering products he didn’t look down upon his less distinguished, recently ensnared colleague. But rather as an equal. Even if that equal was two plus two making five. But for a mere mortal to be as close to the equivalent as just one unit astray was some honour by comparison.

‘Congrats, Prof,’ Mower said, extending his hand. ‘Your organisation has saved the world.’

‘Our organisation, my dear chap, if I may be excused for being pedantic,’ Delphi responded taking a firm grip of Glen’s mit. ‘You are, after all, very much a member now. Indeed, your future contributions will elevate you to possibly the most valuable asset in our mission.’

Mower prepared himself to be offered the top job at the Hologram Defense Program, possibly reigning in the designs of the hologram happy General Colman P Wilmington III.

‘I can see how the holograms saved us, but I can also acknowledge their potency to cause probs if not deployed with the utmost care,’ Glen assured the Professor in the preliminary to his acceptance speech for the important role about to be assigned to him.

‘Quite,’ came the learned one’s reply. ‘Which is where you come in.’ Mower stood up again and was about to thrust out his hand again to accept the role. ‘The holograms will be shelved for now, too risky an endeavour. Too damaging to the very fabric of the history we seek to maintain. Instead, we are going with manned expeditions. We have geared ourselves up to this despite opposition from the aforesaid General Colman P Wilmington III. You, Glen Mower, will not only go back in history but also go down in history as the world’s first Pastronaut.’

‘Eh?..What?’

‘We will have to work on your vocabulary as your previous utterance would only be appropriate if you met the Scottish inventor of the same name in your adventures.’

‘You’re expecting me to time-travel and sort these Route 1066 messes out. The holograms are surely good enough as I have just witnessed?’

‘Yes, the missions have been a success,’ Professor Delphi admitted, ‘but we have not come through them unscathed. As well you know, due to the maverick nature of our holograms we now have added Joan of Arc and Frankenstein to history’s rich broth. We cannot afford to include further ingredients of our making for fear of making it an inedible feast. And that’s without the worry of the Sonny Liston hologram being on the loose.’

‘Sonny Liston? You mean the former heavyweight champ of old? Tell me, Prof, how the heck his hologram was ever thought capable of putting history right?’

‘Without availing you of the full story, dear boy,’ the Delphi replied. ‘Due to Route 1066 meddling, the Titanic was due to complete its maiden voyage as the lookouts were primed to spot the iceberg in good time. After much deliberation it was decided to deploy the Sonny Liston hologram to peruse the deck of the unsinkable ship and stare at passengers. For it was said by friend and foe alike that the brute of a fellow possessed a stare that could turn anyone to ice. The ploy worked a treat as the lookouts became distracted by the additional contributions made by Liston to the freeze festooned scenery and again failed to spot the iceberg.’

‘So, job done. What’s the problem?’

‘It meant that the Sonny Liston hologram continued to exist going from that situation in 1912 to the political hotbed of the Balkans on the precipice of war two years later. We have sitings of him in his boxing mitts and dressing gown emblazoned with his name in downtown Sarajevo at the time of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The worry is he could well enveigle himself in the discussions that followed that incident, which led to nations fighting nations and various alliances being enacted, which brought about the Great War and instead, by dint of his forceful personality persuade the powerbrokers that the best way to attain world domination was to let him fight Floyd Patterson instead.’

‘Yes, I can just about see that could be problematic,’ Mower sympathised. ‘But that doesn’t mean I am going to jump into some sort of spaceship and go playing about in the past because I am more dependable than a bloody hologram.’

‘You won’t be in a spaceship, my dear fellow. ‘You’ll be directing operations from a portaloo.’