Welcome everyone, and thank you for your interest in becoming field agents for our Bureau’s most exclusive, exciting unit, the TTBK – which, as I certainly hope everyone here already knows, ha-ha, stands for Time-Traveling Baby Killers. Yep, all the whispers you’ve heard are true: our scientists unlocked the secrets of time travel a few years back. Obviously, our thoughts turned to sending agents back in time to kill history’s supervillains. And obviously, if you’re going to time travel to kill history’s supervillains, you want to do so when they’re at their weakest, not wait until they’re full grown and can fight back or have armed thugs or scores of coked-up child soldiers around them, or whatever.
Before we begin the selection process, I want to go over a few key points, so you can determine straight away if this job isn’t for you, and stop wasting both your time and ours:
(1) No annoying “clever” types who ask endless questions about “how do you know this won’t alter the delicate continuum of mankind for the worse, blah blah blah”. Seriously. No one wants to hear your belabored philosophical-existential-ethical bullshit, we’ve heard it all before. I’m sure you were very impressive in your freshman Chaos Theory 101 class, or your Intro to Science Fiction course, or wherever your little mind was first blown by a super-simplified explanation of the Butterfly Effect. Are you satisfied? Because out here in the real world, we don’t give two shits about any of that; we’re willing to roll the dice and take our fucking chances. You want to travel back in time to kiss Ray Bradbury’s ass, you do that on your own dime. Around these corridors we’ve got a saying, and I want you all to repeat after me: It Is ALWAYS Better To Kill Baby Hitler. Look, I’ll tell you what I tell all our new recruits: if I’m wrong and it turns out the world was better off with Hitler, I’ll be the first to admit it, AND the first round of Friday Happy Hour drinks are on me, ok?
(2) Do you have, or have you ever had, a rescue dog? Because if so, I’m afraid you’re disqualified. People with rescue dogs invariably use time travel to go check out their dog’s origin story, and coo over how cute they were as a puppy. And I totally get it, but at the same time, those are taxpayer dollars you’re wasting. The last thing this department needs is another audit.
(3) Many people come here thinking there’s going to be all this training in martial arts, and weaponry, and spy stuff, and just getting all-around jacked as shit. You know, movie montage crap. Let me be clear: there will be none of that. Nor are there any physical fitness requirements for the job. You’re going to be killing babies. You don’t need to be super strong, or know how to fight, or anything. We deal exclusively with the newest and tiniest of babies. Most of them can’t even open their eyes yet. So if you have visions of getting into Marvel superhero shape, I hate to disappoint, but you’ve come to the wrong fucking place. The reality is, most agents gain between 15 and 30 pounds their first year in the field.
(4) That said, we do require people with a very special kind of mental strength, because as already mentioned, you’re going to be killing totally defenseless babies. That is the job, day after day, 365 days a year. You might think that’s obvious, but trust me. Everyone thinks they’ve got what it takes, but when you’re actually there, standing over the bassinet, looking down at baby Hitler, clutching that pillow between your hands so hard your knuckles turn white? I shouldn’t have to say this, but: he’s not going to look like Hitler. He won’t be sporting a teeny tiny Hitler mustache, or wearing a little swastika armband in place of the usual hospital bracelet, or anything like that. He’s going to look like every other innocent, helpless little baby in that nursery, with arms so weak he couldn’t raise them in a Nazi salute if he tried.
(5) If you do choke on the mission, and realize you don’t actually have what it takes to travel into the past to assassinate newborn babies who will in time grow up to be notorious enemies of humanity? Please, PLEASE, just come back here, fess up that you pussied out, and we’ll send someone else. There will be no repercussions, I promise. Under NO circumstances are you to abscond with the baby, and go leaving it with some nice cheerful peasant lady in the countryside, in the harebrained hope that that will make all the difference. The stakes are too high to take those kinds of chances. We stick with what we know works: bullet between the eyes, pillow over the face, that sort of thing. Uncle Sam isn’t bankrolling your studies into the nature-v-nurture debate. Yeah, yeah, you’re all nodding your heads in agreement now. And yet, every year we get at least one Clarice, clutching her little lamb as she races through time and space in a pathetic and futile rescue attempt, except that lamb is a human infant with genocide written in its DNA. Believe me when I say, if you pull a Clarice, we WILL send agents after you. And they’ll be real agents, jacked as shit and experienced in all manner of lethal combat with adult humans. Got it?
(6) Before I wrap up, a message from our fantastic accounting department: They want me to warn you against turning your assignments into little time-traveling holidays. No pre- or post-assasination drinks in a Bavarian alehouse, or rolls in the hay in old-timey bordellos, or detours to get selfies with famous historical people. Get in, murder the baby, and get out, okay? You might think to yourself, “but everything back here in the past costs so little money, how will the accounting department even notice”? But oh, do they notice. Our accountants are second to none. Also, they all undergo rigorous physical training, so they’re jacked as shit. You do NOT want us sending them after your expense account-abusing ass, believe you me.