MacLaren, or rather, the consciousness of , checked his watch. Around him, four others were waking up in different parts of the city. They were the first team of the "Traveler" program, sent from a desolate future to save humanity from itself.
MacLaren found himself falling in love with a wife who wasn't his. Marcy formed a bond with her social worker, David, that blurred the lines of her mission. They were supposed to be cold, efficient soldiers from a dead world, but the 21st century was infectious. Every life they saved created a new variable the Director hadn’t predicted.
By the time the season reached its climax, the team realized they weren't the only ones who had traveled back. Factions had formed in the future—rebel groups who believed the Director was a tyrant. As the team stood on the roof of an observatory, watching the sky for a sign that they had actually changed the future, they realized the war they thought they left behind had followed them through time. Travelers - Season 1
"Protocol One," MacLaren whispered, his voice steady despite the adrenaline. "The mission comes first."
But the 21st century was messier than the history books suggested. Marcy, the team’s medic, had arrived in the body of a woman with a profound learning disability—a detail the Director’s historical records had missed. Trevor, the engineer and one of the oldest souls in the program, found himself trapped in the body of a high school athlete with a concussive temper. Carly, the tactician, was now a young mother facing an abusive partner, and Philip, their historian, was reeling from the immediate, agonizing cravings of a heroin addiction his host body had cultivated. MacLaren, or rather, the consciousness of , checked
"We’re the last hope for the species," Carly snapped, checking the magazine of her sidearm. "The Director doesn't care about our host's social lives."
The air in the 21st century tasted sweet—dangerously sweet—to Grant MacLaren as he opened his eyes. For the first time in his life, he wasn't smelling the recycled, metallic tang of a dying bunker; he was smelling rain on pavement and the cheap cologne of a man whose life he had just overwritten. MacLaren found himself falling in love with a
"We aren't just here to execute missions," Philip rasped, his hands shaking as he calculated the odds of their success. "We’re living these people's lives. We’re ghosts in their skin."