#rob and sarah would not like number going to work for the secret time organization

[sharkneto]

Really random ask but i just thought of something interesting; if the commission exists in Number’s timeline, how would he react if they gave him a job offer?? (before the events of HIT, he has no idea what the commission is)

i just wanna know how number would react to the commission? i imagine he’d consider saying yes for a tour of this Really Cool Time Travel Organization, but at the same time he’d absolutely hate them.

This has been sitting in my inbox for a while (sorry) and it's partly because I'm bad at answering asks and partly because... I never fucking considered this? And it's such a fun and interesting what-if, too! What if Number got recruited by the Commission?

So, the Commission of course exists in Number's timeline - it exists in all timelines - but the canon reason they don't bother Number is 1) apocalypse is still on and 2) when things change enough for his branch to be on their radar, Five is causing them so many problems they don't have resources to divert and fix it and it's a "we'll get to it after we deal with Five" (which they never get a chance to do because Five keeps causing them problems and destroying their resources).

But if the Commission had been smarter, they should have gone to tap Number before he ran into Five again and before they tried blackmailing Five into a contract. It's an obvious solution - they know the kind of stellar work Five can do, and their Five is all jaded and too broken from them leaving him in the apocalypse for too long (oops) to control properly. That's a dud, but maybe this younger version of him is workable - controllable via inexperience rather than destroyed will?

From Number's end, I think he'd be wildly curious and initially interested. Shifting Mirrors Five was a secret agent for years in no small part because he thought it was cool. Time Agent is *even cooler* than secret agent. And he knows about Time! These guys know about Time! He could learn so much! He could be a Time Agent. Before he learned more about it, I think he'd kind of make a plan of "finish my degree with Sarah and then go do this for a bit before coming back and getting my PhD." It's time travel! He doesn't have to miss any time in the real-world, they only want five years, they can't complain that he's putting it off a few months to finish his degree because they can just jump ahead and pick him up then - wins all around.

Where this all falls apart for the Commission is Number has better morals than Five. Five is better at the "a few hundred dead so I can save the world (my family)" rationalization and long game. Number coming in would just be killing people to keep the timeline on its arbitrary track. He doesn't have a "direct" A to B on how this helps him stop the apocalypse (even if the Commission is stringing him along about that). He's pragmatic, he's practical, he fucking hates killing. Any solution that doesn't involve a life being lost, he's going to take it (Marcus only dies by his hand because he misestimated how heavy the dumpster was going to be and didn't have time to recalculate if that was going to be survivable for poor Marcus, he regrets grunts dying in the big living room battle and none are killed by him. In the alternate timeline, Carmichael only dies by his foot because Carmichael just killed Five and Rob and Sarah are in direct danger from him). Number is not going to play their game, is going to look at how they keep the timelines managed and say "that's bullshit".

So you absolutely nailed it - he would absolutely want a tour of the time organization, want to know all about what they're doing and how they do it and think it's so neat --- right up until he learns about Corrections and how their entire operation hinges on incidental murders to keep the timeline neat and orderly to their arbitrary criteria. And then he'd want to destroy them brick by brick.