Blood Trail

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Release: October 2001
Format: Novelette
Genres: Science Fiction, Mystery and Crime
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Detective Wheldon, the top man in NYPD Homicide is approached by two FBI agents who offer to let him go back in time two weeks to observe the 4th killing by a serial killer.

This is the first story in Future Imperfect, a 2001 anthology of 12 original time-travel stories, co-edited by the prolific anthologist Martin H. Greenberg (1941-2011) who was also a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.

— Michael Main

When it became clear that time travel was even a remote possibility, the government bought a lot of scientists. Those who didn’t play got discredited.

DEBUT

“Blood Trail,” in Past Imperfect, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff (DAW Books, October 2001).

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Circa AD 2000 to 2099: “[. . .] would have been fashionable thirty years before in the affluent [19]90s.”

Time Travel Methods

Time Habitats: “The actual room was ice-cold, as if it were a poorly functioning refrigeration unit.”

Themes

Caution! Do Not Destroy Spacetime Continuum!: “It might even, one tech said in a hushed voice, cause a rupture in the space-time continuum that couldn’t be resolved.”
Never Change the Past!: “Interference is strictly forbidden, of course.”
Time Sherlocks: Wheldon and Kingsbury
Time Travel Sickness, Injuries, and Mixed-Up Body Parts: “He hadn’t been nauseous since he was a rookie, but this feeling was close.”
Top Secret Time Travel: “You can’t speak of it to anyone. Ever. Is that clear?”

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From the Temporal Offices of the FBI, about two weeks after the fourth murder ⋙ to the same place, two weeks earlier. Note: Wheldon and Kingsbury.