Here it is:
My name is Jonathon Bauer. I'm a veteran soldier assigned to a unit called the Combat Applications group. I'm a bit unusual in the unit; I'm kind of quiet, thanks largely to my parents' abuse of me.
Our unit does special operations in places most people have never heard of. We also get to try out exotic technologies. I was minding my own business when a fellow operator showed me a strange device. It looked like an oversized iPhone. The visible buttons resembled the iPhone. It had what looked like a camera on the backside of it. I looked at it curiously. What was this thing?
Sam- my colleague and a good friend- informed me what it was.
"It is a time travel device with the ability to impose mind control. This is one of the five that the science people have built. Three official ones, two off the books." I looked at him. He saw the look on my face and elaborated a bit. "One of the science guys is a friend of mine, he built these two for me. I figured you could be trusted with it. just don't go changing the important parts of history." That made perfect sense.
"Got it, don't kill Karl Marx or Adolf Hitler."
I carefully pressed what looked like the unlock button, and the screen lit up. It displayed a photo of a book and the text 'Time Travel system 1.0'. So I pressed the button a second time, and it opened up. It revealed a unique screen. Date, time, and location could be selected at the top of the screen. There was a large camera screen with a targeting crosshair.
A screen button for 'stealth mode'. Another for 'medical ', and another for 'mind control'. Yet Another button with a '?' for manual and help. There was a pause button, like on a DVR or DVD player. An additional button had a bullseye design, labeled 'Select individual'. The last button was a silhouette with an arrow and an 'x' placed on it.
So I pressed the manual button and started reading. It seemed that this device was a time machine. It could transport you to any time and place in the past. The stealth setting made you unseen, untouchable, and unheard. It allowed you not to contaminate anything in the place you were in under that mode. You could pass through secure doors like a ghost. You could also set the lighting to anywhere you were. Only you could see them.
There was a camera mode, capable of both full video and still pictures.
The target button was to select a subject. And many of the other functions worked after selecting a target.
The pause was to freeze all for up to two minutes. Seemed like a good thing to have available.
Mind control would let you influence and change a subject's opinions, attitudes, desires, and actions.
Medical let you see just about anything you wanted to in a person. Including reproductive parts and fertility. And there was the ability to change and correct things, including cancer, genetic conditions, infertility, pregnancy complications, and induce or restart fertility. Checking on a growing baby in the womb was all at the user's fingertips. And how labor has been going too.
This device basically could make someone biologically young indefinitely, regardless of chronological age.
The odd button with a silhouette and 'x' was to enter and control that person for a time set by the user, up to a maximum of 7 days. Using that would let you be that person, using their body and place this machine into a holding mode. At the end of it, you would exit that person and resume using the machine. There were different levels, from 1 to 10. At 10, you are in complete control of that person. Level 5, you merge consciousness with that person and, you can hear each other's thoughts, feel each other's emotions...except it's all in that person's voice so they are never aware it is you...they just have a funny feeling of being watched and not feeling like themselves. At level 1, you are shadowing that person and subtly influencing their thoughts by patching your own thoughts into their mind (in their own voice, of course).
So I decided to test this thing out. I selected a date from a few years back- on June 11, 2014, 7:30am and my parents' home. I selected stealth mode. Next, I knew I was in my parents' house. I moved from the garage to upstairs. I called out loudly. No response. I moved towards my parents' bedroom. And passed through the closed door. Hmm. Looks like stealth mode worked. Mom and dad were lying in bed, just starting to wake up.