"And that," Raymond said, "is what strawberries should taste like".

Raymond Bitters bit into another one of the plump, ripe berries, dripping with springtime as he popped it in his jaw. This was the kinda thing you couldn't get where he lived, or when he lived; the hydroponic berries just didn't cut it. One of the perks of his job was that he got to experience a lot of local culture, but at the price of knowing that he couldn't get the strawberries, coffee or red rope licorice like this back home.

Raymond took one more bite of strawberry and stood up, anxious to get to work. He looked up and down the sidewalk; everyone looked normal enough. Of course, so did he, so looks didn't tell the whole story. He was pretty sure there were others like him here, but he had no real way of telling. It didn't matter, they couldn't change anything. He made his way out of the cafe and began to walk down the street, towards the square and the gathering crowds. Everything on time, he thought to himself. He knew it had to be, but he still had trouble believing everything will run exactly the same, every time. It couldn't work any other way, in fact, or he couldn't be doing his job as he knew it. He continued down the street, noticing the cars, the building facades, and even the style of landscaping. Things changed, he thought to himself, but the people here had no real idea how the next 20 minutes would affect them. Truthfully, Ray didn't either, but he did know it might be important, and that's why he was here. He approached the crowd, gathered like excited children to hear the Reverend Thatcher McMichael, local salvation preacher according to news reports, local false profit according to various churches, and local dangerous cult leader according to the US government. He was important in the scheme of things, but no one was 100% sure why. Ray broke out his digital recorder, cloaked in a plastic case to give it a local flavor, and watched.

"Brothers and sisters, I am truly moved by the outpourin' of support I've seen here today, both with your presence and your pocketbooks. I know various factions here want to stop me from my preachin'," the Reverend pointed at some uniformed police, "and brothers and sisters, let me just tell you, no one, save the grave of God Himself can stop me here today!"

Ray listened with intent as most of those around him clapped enthusiastically, but to Ray he sounded like every other southern preacher he'd ever seen in the digital archives. He saw the city law enforcement shuffle nervously as Reverend McMichael pointed their way, but there was no way, Ray thought, that a city would allow a gathering this large without some police. Ray estimated between two and three thousand here, with many others looking out from office windows and drivers slowing down as they passed. Ray continued to listen.

"There's no doubt in my mind that we're on the path to righteousness, friends, and you being here today proves it to me. Repent today, and accept my teachings, and you shall be saved! The world is ending, brothers and sisters, I've seen it in dreams, I've seen it in visions, and I've seen it in my own backyard!"

Ray was unsure what he meant by "in his backyard", but he wouldn't put it past this guy to use such metaphor. Ray looked around and began to notice the folks he was sharing the lawn with; for the most part they were clad in business suits or other office attire, a few in shorts and T-shirts. Lunchtime, Ray thought, these people must have passed by on their lunch breaks, and happened upon this park gathering. Was pure happenstance the reason for McMichael's popularity? Did these people just wander by and decide to join a cult? Unlikely, but Ray couldn't know for sure. Some of the people here were most likely on similar missions as Ray's, he spotted various attendees with recording equipment of all sorts, as well as a good deal of what looked like media. Ray was here because there was no record of this specific speech in the archives, and this was what a temporal historian like himself did.

When researchers in 2027 discovered, by chance, in a low budget tachyon study, that it was impossible to change the time line, many simply didn't believe. Popular fiction of the time contained many stories of going back and changing the past to alter the future, and if all you could do was go back and fulfil the future, well, there really wasn't much market in fiction for that. Some brought forward the grandfather paradox; simply put, what if you went back in time and killed your grandfather, before your father was born? But if your father was never born, then you weren't born, but then who went back in time to kill your grandfather? If no one did, then you'd be born, but if you were born, then you go back in time, and therein is the paradox. The monotemporalists had an amazingly simple answer: if you go back to kill your grandfather, you'll fail. The past simply cannot be changed. Religious figures and philosophers all over the globe had a problem with the new theory as well; if the timeline can't be changed, then we're all stuck in the grooves of time, with no hope of shaping our destiny. Again, the monotemporalists had a simple answer: the timeline may already be written, but we're the ones writing it. Your choices effect the predetermined outcomes, but they're still your choices and your outcomes. The theories were proven in the first time travel tests of 2054, and the first man, a tempronaut named Buzz La Sange, traveled 15 minutes backwards in time on June 20th, 2069, exactly one hundred years to the day that man landed on the moon.

Raymond Bitters took his first trip back in 2078, four years after the Intertemporal Research Agency was founded. He went to a baseball game in 2016 and watched his great-grandfather pitch a no hitter for the Las Vegas Aces, against the Anaheim Angels. Ray had since traveled to various points in time, always undercover, always dressed the part, and always doing research. That was his job; he went back in time to find out how events transpired. He'd even done some aerial work; the agency had a small fleet of one man, high altitude, stealth jets for wide area surveillance. It was in one of these jets that he almost lost his life, an otherwise routine overhead mission scouting flood damage in the Mississippi delta during the summer of 2017. A meteor, as far as he could tell, hit the tail of his jet, setting it on fire and out of control. The agency beamed him out back to the lab just in time, and they beamed the jet out fifteen seconds later, to crash harmlessly in the Utah desert in the present. The only lasting effects were a crashed, replaceable jet and a rather fantastic light show in the skies over the southern United States. Ray was never truly worried for his life, however. Since time couldn't be changed, just fulfilled, his job was fairly safe; the agency's supercomputers had searched the past and never found a dead Raymond Bitters. This time around, Ray had a very specific mission: record and observe the speech given by the Reverend Thatcher McMichael, in Glendale Civic Park, on May 18th, 2024. The agency was recording all the speeches by McMichael, as it discovered that a major nuclear meltdown that took place in 2025 in San Onofre, California was linked to him and his followers. Ray still wasn't sure what this religious zealot had to do with the meltdown, but he was recording and researching to find out. 2,300 people in Orange and Los Angeles counties had died from radioactive fallout, and many thousands more were injured. Though the event couldn't be stopped from happening, the agency's purpose was to discover the truth behind unexplained events in the past.

Ray continued to listen to the Reverend go on and on, and he began to think it entirely unlikely that this man could have willed anyone to do anything but fall asleep. A well-dressed gentleman approached Ray, also apparently bored by the reverend's rambling. "So, you think this guy's got anything?' The man asked Ray.

"Not likely," Ray responded, "He just seems like a fool to me."

"I dunno 'bout that," the gentlemen replied, "all this 'end of the world' talk unnerves me, ya know?"

"End of the world?" Ray responded, "the world's not ending anytime soon, my friend. It'll be around for years to come."

"I'm glad you think so," the man said "I have to worry about it every day where I work."

With that, the man wandered off. Ray thought about the implications of his own statement: he knew that in a little over a year, most of this area would be laid radioactive by the event he was researching. For many Southern California residents, the end of the world really was coming soon. He wondered if the Reverend knew this, somehow. Ray reassured himself with knowledge that people had been predicting the end times for millennia, and that the fanatical ravings of a smalltime cult leader didn't really amount to much in the grand scheme of things. He couldn't help noticing, however, how entranced the Reverend's audience was, and he couldn't help worrying what each of these people was getting out of the sermon. Would one of them cause the meltdown? He knew there was a connection somewhere, the supercomputers at the agency had confirmed this. He wanted to find it. He kept listening to the Reverend, hoping to get something out of the increasingly lengthy speech.

"Friends, we have done far too much against the word of God, and meddled far too much in affairs best left to the Almighty Himself. We make hearts and livers in laboratories, we give voices to machines, we split the atom for almost all our country's power." Ray listened more intently; this might be something. "These sorts of abominations can not continue! We must take actions today!"

Was this it, Ray wondered? Could that line have driven one of his followers to perform the sabotages found within the nuclear core? Possibly, but he wanted more evidence. Ask and ye shall receive, Ray thought, as the Reverend brought a man up on stage.

"This here's Steven Butler...he pledged to me earlier today that he will do his part to rid the world of the abomination of nuclear power." Ray looked in interest to see the man he had just been chatting with, up on stage. "Steven is an employee at the San Oh-no-fray nuc'ler power plant, just down the road from here." Ray looked on with anxiety with what might be coming, as the Reverend continued to speak. "Expect to hear some very interesting things soon from down there. Thank you Steven. God bless" Ray watched Steven step down, and was concerned. This looked to Ray like a very real possibility. He dug in his pocket for his Mobile, and typing in Steven's name, found that he did indeed work at the San Onofre plant, and would go on to die there in the meltdown.

Ray continued recording the speech, mostly a formality in his mind, as he was fairly sure he had the answer. He listened to the end of the Reverend's speech, just in case any more clues presented themselves. "I need to thank ya all, brothers and sisters, for coming out and sharing the truth with me this afternoon. Most of all I need to thank God, for if not for his divine signs, I would most likely be in prison or dead." Ray listened a little more closely. "If I hadn't have seen his angel come to me with my own eyes, I would never have given my life to Him and His Glory. Seven years ago, as I prayed in my backyard for some divine guidance, I saw the angel of Heaven streak across the sky, and disappear in the glory of the Lord. It didn't last that long, but just seeing the Angel's fiery chariot moving in front of my very eyes and disappear into Heaven was all the sign I needed to know what path my life must take."

Ray sank back. Did he just hear what he thought he did? Fiery chariot? Disappear into Heaven? Seven years ago would have been 2017. There was no way this was a coincidence. The Reverend concluded and stepped off the stage, and Ray stopped recording. He knew he didn't change time to make it happen this way, which was impossible. He knew he wouldn't be reprimanded, but just knowing that he fulfilled history that night in his stealth jet was enough to make his stomach sink. He walked back up the street with the rest of the crowd, and he turned back behind the outdoor café he began the day at. He signaled that he was ready to return, with news of both the immediate and long term causes of the San Onofre meltdown.