“New York,” Thomas replied. “Project Legacy is working out of an office building in Brooklyn, at least for the time being. Everyone’s gathering there when they pop back up in this timeline. Might take a few years to get the whole crew assembled.”

“Uh, what’s the date? I’m not exactly sure New York is where I wanna be in the ass end of 2001,” Archie said nervously. 

“September 30,” Greg replied. “And yeah, I said the same thing. Just so you know, the Twin Towers are still standing. That’s one of the bargaining chips the Project used to buy goodwill from Uncle Sam, at least in this timeline. They let it go the last go-round and shit got all kinds of befuckled. No 9-11 means no War on Terror, which was apparently one of the big triggers for the climate crisis the Project is trying to head off.”

“Hang on. Climate crisis?” Archie asked. 

“Did you not pay attention to your briefing?” Thomas asked, incredulous. 

“I didn’t exactly get one of those,” Archie replied. “According to my recruiter, I’m a security risk. My contact wasn’t sure whether or not I could be trusted, so they told me I’d get the full story after the reset.”

“Well, shit,” Greg said. “I can give you the rundown, but it’s kind of a long story.”

“It’s an 8-hour drive at least,” Thomas said dryly. “Might as well clue him in. Start from the beginning.”

“‘In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth,’” Greg began. 

“Smartass,” Archie grumbled. 

“Consider that a little bit of payback,” Greg replied, grinning. “Anyway. The long and the short of it is, this ain’t the first 2001. Project Legacy’s figured out how to time travel, sort of. They can’t send objects back, but what they can do is take a detailed scan of someone’s brain, capture their memories and personality, and yeet it back along their personal timeline, effectively sending them back in time. Usually hits somewhere between the ages of 16-18, maybe a little older or younger, depending. They can’t really tell for sure when someone’s gonna land.”

“Yeah, I got that part,” Archie said. 

“Well, the reason they’re doing it is because in the first go-round, humanity managed to get Earth all befuckled. You know what a climate cascade is?” he asked. 

“It’s the point in climate change where a bunch of little factors all start adding up to a big-ass catastrophe, yeah? I thought that was just a theory,” Archie said. 

“Well, in the first timeline, they hit that point around the year 2060 or so. The temperature of the Atlantic rose to the point where it started disrupting the Gulf Stream, and after that, shit went downhill fast. The polar ice caps went pretty quick, hurricanes got bad enough that they had to make up new categories after 5, crops failed across the planet, the whole nine yards. Even with the best and brightest minds humanity had to offer working on the problem, they reckoned that by the year 2500, Earth would look more like Venus than Earth, and that was with drastic intervention. They were about 40 years too late to fix anything, and there wasn’t any way to get those 40 years back, until suddenly, there was.”

“Funny how that works,” Archie said. 

“Yeah, well, apparently the tech had existed for a few years by the time the Project was founded, but no one was fool enough to try it, not until even the rich folks started to starve,” Greg said. “At any rate, they figured if they could get rid of fossil fuels by the year 2030, they could stave off the worst of it. Earth would still go through a rough patch, but it would recover.”

“Good fucking luck with that,” Archie said darkly. 

“They had an ace up their sleeve: nuclear fusion. If they could figure out how to make fusion work, they’d have a limitless supply of clean energy. In the next timeline, they did just that. Got things up and running in the year 2029, pretty as you please. Except, someone goofed, the reactor went critical, and Earth was fucked once more. So, they did it again, carefully this time. Maybe too carefully, because they missed the deadline. Once it was gone, they figured what the hell, might as well work out the bugs and try again in the next. Timeline 4, that’s the one we remember.”

“So what happened there? Why restart again? Things weren’t looking too bad when they sent me back,” Archie said. 

“Well, that’s where we come in,” Greg said. “Someone cottoned onto the Project, started assassinating all their public-facing members in horrific fashion. That set the Project back, and they blew past the deadline. Again. They did a better job that go-round, but a cascade was still on the way. So, they reset, and they brought us in so we could find the evil bastards responsible for cutting up scientists and do unto them before they could do unto us.”

Greg tried to keep his tone neutral, but he couldn’t quite keep the growl out of his voice. 

“Why does it sound personal for you?” Archie asked. 

“Because one of the scientists they cut up was my wife.”

“Oh. Shit, dude. Sorry to hear it,” Archie said. 

“Thanks, I guess,” Greg said. “Can’t say I’m all that keen on meeting Loretta again. From what I was told, she won’t remember me, or our time together. Got killed before they could make a backup of her brain. But, if I can keep her safe this time… That’ll be good enough for me.”

“We’ll keep her safe,” Thomas said quietly. “And all the rest. Me personally, I don’t have anyone close to involved with the Project, but the whole ‘saving the world’ thing is a pretty worthwhile goal. Better than anything I fought for in my old life.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m much of an idealist,” Archie declared. “And the world won’t mean shit to me once it’s gone. But, the pay is good, and you guys got me out of a bad situation, so I’m in. Just don’t ask me to do any actual fighting. Not until I get some T in me, at any rate.”

“We’ll have other fighters,” Thomas said. “Whatever crazy shit you can cook up, we’ll find a use for it.”

“What’s my budget?” Archie asked eagerly. 

“No idea,” Thomas replied. “But I get the feeling that we won’t be hurting for cash.”