A Brief History of CHRONOS

The scientific principles of time-travel were discovered in the mid-22nd century by a small team of researchers, headed by Ian Alexander, Ryan Jefferson and Madison Grace.  Funded primarily by the U.S. government, the activities of these researchers have never been fully revealed to the public, although a flurry of exposes published in 2161 claimed that government operatives were manipulating the timeline to benefit U.S. and European interests.

The most prominent of those media outlets, The Hourly Intrepid,  mysteriously disappeared from the historical record. The masthead suggests that the journal was in circulation for more than sixty years, but the only record that we have of their investigation, or of their very existence, is contained in a small file of government records that were protected from chronological tampering and released to the public over a century later.


It is still not clear exactly how much history was altered in those early decades of time travel. Strong pressure from advocates of government transparency and accountability both within the United States and abroad resulted in the creation of an international society known as the Chrono-Historical Research Institute (CHRI) in 2231. CHRI was initially tasked with the challenge of creating a code of ethics for historical researchers, including strict prohibitions against any sort of timeline manipulation.  In an effort to ensure that the timeline was not altered, the first academic research did not involve human interaction of any sort, but relied instead on input from small transmitters that recorded activity at various locations and historical junctures.

While CHRI recordings of daily interactions provided historians with a great deal of raw data, it left many questions unanswered.  The Natural Observation Society (NOS) lobbied for greater freedom of researching, stating that it was very difficult to put historical events into their proper context when forced to rely solely on recorded information.  Analysts often misinterpreted events because they were viewing them through the lens of their own time and culture.  The only way to fully understand history, they argued, was to become immersed in the language, customs, and technology of that era.  In 2242, the NOS devised a series of protocols that aimed to minimize, if not entirely negate, corruption of the timeline by genetically encoding historical researchers.  Time travel would thus be restricted to a very small number of carefully trained historians who would travel to a set destination and return directly to their point of origin.

The two organizations merged in 2247 to form the Chrono-Historical Research and Natural Observation Society (CHRONOS), and they moved quickly to develop a system that would ensure optimal safety for both the timeline and the historians involved.

As with any scientific endeavor, those who participated in the earliest efforts were a rare breed -- willing to risk their lives in search of greater knowledge.  Seven researchers were killed within the first five years, and three others were institutionalized due to complications with the genetic encoding.  These pioneers paved the way for future generations of researchers, however, whose historical trips were safe and hazard free.

Over the next five decades, CHRONOS historians had the opportunity to observe previous generations in their natural habitat. Headquartered in Washington, DC, the organization gathered a massive amount of data.

In 2305, a terrorist attack destroyed CHRONOS headquarters, killing 153 staff members and stranding twenty-four historians at various points in time.  Although there were proposals to rebuild the research facility, funding was never approved. Fortunately for historians, however, the records of these expeditions were housed not only at the CHRONOS campus, but at a variety of universities throughout the world.

Today, all that remains of CHRONOS is a small group of international researchers who maintain the archives and organize the data for educational purposes.  While some files remain classified, the reports available in this archive have been cleared for public access.