Walker had barely started a bowl of all-natural oatmeal freshly 3D-printed off of the Tyson-Whole Foods app store when the temporal disturbance alarms sounded. Phase IV, isolated to Detroit. Chief Matuzak came rushing to the kitchen and Walker, with a deliberate eye movement, dismissed the Tyson oatmeal advertisements flickering on the inside of his glasses lenses. The holo-montage of the young, multicultural bohemian-looking oat farmers and their good-hearted farming work faded to reveal the Chief’s red-faced visage. “Phase IV disturbance,” he gasped. “November 2016.”

“Lot of activity in that year lately, Chief,” Walker said, rising to follow him to the launch chamber. “The 2016 Brexit vote yesterday, and now this?” Walker and his partner Lyle had apprehended three temporal insurgents mere moments before they’d succeeded in altering the historic Brexit vote to favor a non-historical “Leave” victory. Walker and Lyle had been married almost ten years.

The Chief nodded. “Madam President has the NSA looking into it, but right now it’s anyone’s guess who’s trying to alter the timeline.”

“Justice-involved persons, possibly,” Walker said, his face contorting as he desperately recalled the State Department’s most recent tweet on un-biased language. The Chief shot a proud, approving glance at him as they walked into the launch room.

Launch chamber 641A was a huge hangar situated 1.60934 kilometers beneath the Denver International Airport’s baggage claim area. Men, women and people of all genders ran around in clean white jumpsuits, checking equipment and adjusting floating interfaces like out of Minority Report. In the center of the room sat the time-sled, tapered at the front like a bullet and fixed on a long track ending at the enormous time gate, itself glowing with mysterious temporal energy. OLEDs displayed Walker’s destination in a tidy sans-serif font: Detroit, 2016. Walker wasn’t even born yet.

“Person of interest is armed with a wireless neuronet card and a Yarygin MP-443,” the Chief read off an Apple tablet, careful not to gender the subject. “Zie is planning mentational attacks on voting centers that had a narrow margin of victory in that election year.” The Chief looked up from the tablet and fell silent. “Temporal communications decrypted this morning suggest a suicide mission to alter the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to favor a non-historical Trump victory.”

Walker stared at the Chief grimly. Every school kid or child-identifying person could tell you about the historic election of America’s First Woman President. Changing that might mean the Unbiased Speech Act is never enabled, or that Russia and Syria are never liberated from the twin scourges of masculinity and oil independence by the military forces of the Google-ExxonMobil-Department of Defense Corporation.

People tend to think of history as a straight line, one of continuous progress. Probably because our schools teach it that way, Walker thought. Slavery is abolished, then women can vote, then gays can marry. And then finally sex reassignment surgery is available to toddlers upon request. Everything gets better and better, the “Whig history” as they call it. What they don’t understand, Walker realized, is that the line is only continuing toward progress because of the Department of History Enforcement. We protect the timeline from disruption by justice-involved persons.

“Person of interest is set to arrive at a voting center in Detroit on Election Day 2016,” the Chief continued as Walker zipped up his time displacement suit. “Zir ethnicity, age, physical appearance, abledness and gender assigned at birth are of course utterly irrelevant here.” Walker nodded his head, listening carefully to the neutral, inoffensive description and repeating it to himself mentally to commit it to memory. It was imperative that the nondescript individual be identified and stopped.

Walker holstered his blaster. “What kind of sick madman…,” he began, before covering his mouth in shame.

“Careful, Walker,” the Chief said, looking around. “I won’t log that microaggression, but cut the problematic language until you get to Detroit. That’ll be over ten years before the first speech codes are even enacted.”

Walker climbed into the time sled and strapped in, readying himself to prevent the nonhistorical election of Donald J. Trump, November 8, 2016.

“Non-denominational godspeed,” the Chief said, as the time sled’s automatic doors closed, Delorean style.