Scale it Up

Time Travel.

There were people that figured out the physics. There were people that debated the ethics. There were people that made up the rules. It was easy to find people to travel, people to monitor what happened, and people to fix what needed fixing. One assumes with physics and rules in place, the rest should just fall together. That was, however, not the case.

It was easy enough to get one-off excursions and simple experiments done, but nothing that really added up. Sure, this year's trip back to the freshly built pyramids might have 2 more people than last year's – that didn't make the selection process any easier.

The first logical task – sorting out who, generally speaking, would be less likely to suffer side effects from temporal displacement - was a huge undertaking in itself. Cross-referencing genetics, temperament, personal history, habits, talents and a host of other – seemingly unrelated – things was a task that, so far, baffled any individual set of experts and theoreticians. It was only when all the data was pooled and sorted by a newly minted AI did things start to make sense.

There was, of course, no single factor which overrode the others. A combination of influences working together would, when the exam scores were crunched and some minor followup experiments were done, spit out a simple numerical value. That number could define a safe range of activities for anyone interested in stepping outside the normal flow of time.

It was then thought – why not apply the test of that value to people retroactively – both current people at earlier points in their life, and people that existed before time travel was fully regulated.

One, then could tackle a larger issue – the current predisposition to keep time travel influences to an absolute minimum. As everything was geared to keeping disruption out of the equation – what would happen with it?