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There is a blue box that appears in battlegrounds from time to time. Sometimes it's during an action, sometimes after. When it appears at either of those times, a strange man with a black coat and a messy bowl-cut will dash out of the box, glance around, and then hurry back inside the box, muttering about needing to adjust the relays again.
The fact that he appears during or after an action more often than not suggests that he still hasn't gotten the adjustment quite right.
But sometimes the box appears just before a battle.
When it does, the strange man goes out and finds some soldiers. He keeps them company, for a time, plays cards and makes awful music with a banged-up recorder.
Some say he keeps company with soldiers who are going to die, or disappear. But others say he's looking for something, and that the men and women he passes time with are just coincidental.
What is known for sure is that he likes the Highland troops. It only takes a flash of regimental plaid or broad Scottish grins to make him smile, even with tears in the corners of his eyes. And he likes the seamen and the clever young women, and apparently not for the obvious reasons.
Sometimes he tells people that they shouldn't be warring with each other, but he always listens to the reasons for going on with the effort. He's a pacifist, but one who's willing to believe that some things are worth fighting for.
He's been asked once, or a dozen times, about what he's doing, what he's looking for. He says that there's a man, who was a soldier, who was a mercenary, who only fought for himself. That man's dead, or he isn't, or he will be. The man with the blue box is looking for the not-dead man. To save him, or to warn him, or to say goodbye.
He's told each of those things to people who have asked, and more besides. All of them are probably true.
If pressed, the man with the blue box will go into great detail about escaping a horrible fate, sentenced to something by his own people. He'll go on for quite a while about the difficulties of disconnecting a chronal synchronometer, and the ensuing unreliability of an already unreliable transport. But when he registers that his audience isn't following along, he'll smile and say nothing more.
He always leaves before the dawn, well before the battle. But he's helped many a soldier in many a decade, a century, a millennium. Maybe someday he'll run into the man he's searching for.