Notes: Bit like HHGTTG

The man now had three problems as the line he was dangling from suffered a catastrophic existence failure.

"Ahhhhh .... shit ..." cried the man as he started falling.

"Caught you !" said a very peculiar sounding female voice belonging to a very odd looking woman.

"What ??" said a very confused David looking around at the room he was now in.

"You fell when I deleted your line." said Jazlar.

"Deleted ? " said David "Don't you mean cut ?" his eyes started to focus on the alien-looking woman.

"Jesus ! " cried David "Who ... what are you ??"

"Don't panic. I'm Jazlar. When you calm down, I'll explain everything to you."

"OK." Said David "so, what just happened ?"

"You were messing with one of our experiments. We needed Mars to be pure and untouched. Landing primitive space junk on it was bad enough but when you started to land humans and poke around on the surface we were forced to act." she said with just a hint of annoyance.

"The first machines you landed on the surface were simply destroyed and we faked their radio signals so you would not know anything was amiss" she explained.

"What do you mean by 'deleted' ?" asked David.

"I mean deleted from the time-line" she explained "We couldn't let them land and we couldn't keep blowing them up in space because you would get suspicious and give Mars far more attention than we could tolerate. So we used temporal re-engineering to make very subtle adjustments to things like your economy, education, public opinion, etc so the Mars missions wouldn't happen."

"Temporal re-engineering ?" said David "You mean like time travel ?"

"Not quite." said Jazlar "Your line didn't just disappear, the whole Mars mission disappeared along with the winch, your friend and your landing craft" she explained.

"Where is my friend ?" asked David, wondering if he would like the answer.

"He is safely back on Earth" she explained "The Mars mission never happened."

"OK ... what about me ?" asked David.

"You didn't have long to live so I caught you when you fell and faked your suicide on Earth." she explained, "For all intents and purposes, the people on Earth think you died - exactly as it would have happened." she added.

David was becoming overwhelmed with questions. "Temporal re-engineering ?" he asked.

"Yes, when things go off-track, we make very slight changes to bring things back on track." she explained.

"Oh ... OK. But what about me, won't I die soon ?" asked David.

"No, your 'incurable' cancer was easily cured." said Jazlar.

"What, with some kind of advanced treatment ?" asked David.

"Nothing as crude as that. We simply went back a few years and 'tweaked' the cells that would have become cancerous so your cancer would never happen." said Jazlar.

"So... I'm cured ?" asked David.

"No, in this time-line you never had cancer in the first place." said Jazlar.

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