The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A (short story)

The Annotated Autopsy of Agent A was the first story in The Book of the Enemy. It was written by the anthology editor Simon Bucher-Jones and accompanied by Pre-narrative Briefing A.

Summary
An agent of the Great Houses enters the medical room as it's held in stasis. Thirty minutes are on the clock; after that others might begin to notice the pause. The Enemy might not use the technology necessary, but they've devoured histories that have - there's no reason to take the risk. He examines the corpse of President John F. Kennedy, recently deceased from a heart attack at the end of a second term. One meal from birthing, the cells are stuffed full of life-spores.

The first time the Great Houses saw the life-spores was an infestation of the ship Narcissus, infecting and transforming a crew member, leaving only one survivor. This would seem to be the end, but the life-spores began to retroengineer history to insert themselves further backwards, tracing their way back along the Narcissus's life, past colony worlds, all the way to Earth, even infecting the history of other species, rendering them footnotes to their own history. They tried to force their way through to the 50s and 70s, but never quite managed to break through, they need slightly more psychic energy. If able they would try to usurp the roles of the Great Houses, creating their own false histories of Creators and Agents which they would then usurp, an infinite regress of nonsense.

No, the agent decides, in order to prevent this, as the 60s have the psychic energy needed to cause this infestation the spores must be excised at the moment they infected the president. The sixties must burn.

Characters

 * Agent A
 * John F. Kennedy

Worldbuilding

 * James Watt and Jennifer Alistoun are crewmembers of the Narcissus.

Continuity

 * The life-spores infect the British Rocket Group. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, et al.)
 * Time Lords were previously shown to be behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy in PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy and an untitled short story in DWM 171.