It’s 2027. A future Earth, known as Homeline, is exploring hundreds of alternate Earths. It’s also fighting an undeclared war with another worldjumping civilization . . . but that may be the least of its worries! Welcome to Infinite Worlds.
Infinite Worlds is an example of a game setting. But it’s more than that. It’s also a framework that lets players create almost any kind of character, and that makes it easy for GMs to run crossgenre adventures. The Infinite Worlds multiverse is completely optional. GMs who don’t want to permit extradimensional excursions are free to prohibit them. Not everyone is comfortable with blaster-toting wizards fighting Nazi supersoldiers . . . Although that doesn’t have to be the way it works. Many worlds have yet to be discovered; many others are isolated. The PCs may start out completely unaware of the existence of other dimensions, but at some point in the campaign (possibly after months or even years of play), they discover that their world is just one of many. They find a way to travel to an alternate world, or perhaps they discover an extradimensional plot and end up recruited by the Infinity Patrol . . . And everything changes.
Infinite Worlds Glossary alternate: Any timeline except the original Earth. Also “alternate world.” anchor: An echo that does not experience a quantum shift when “history is changed.” banestorm: A natural phenomenon that moves matter between worlds. Centrum: A rival civilization with the ability to travel between worlds. A “Centran” is a native or agent of Centrum. conveyor: A self-propelled device for traveling between alternate worlds. Coventry: An alternate world maintained by the Infinity Patrol as a prison for those – both Homeliners and outtimers – who Know Too Much. echo: An alternate world which is – or appears to be – identical to ours, but at an earlier point in its history. Eraser: A memory-affecting drug used by I-Cops and others to keep the secret of parachronic travel. hell parallel: An alternate world which has suffered a natural or manmade disaster that rendered it unliveable. More loosely, any really bad world. homeboy: Anybody from one’s world of origin. Homeline: The original Earth. I-Cop: An agent of the Infinity Patrol’s Intervention Service. Infinity Patrol: The paramilitary arm of Infinity Unlimited. Infinity Unlimited: A private organization that controls parachronic technology as a monopoly and governs access to alternate timelines. Interworld: The Centran equivalent to the Infinity Patrol. nexus portal: A “natural” path between alternate worlds. outtime: Any world except the original Homeline. outtimer: Anyone from an alternate world. parachronics: The study of alternate worlds. More specifically, the study of why alternate worlds exist, and how travel between them is possible. parachronozoid: A creature with a natural worldjumping ability, especially one that leaves a tunnel or portal behind (those that don’t are rather hard to spot!). parallel: An alternate world that differs from ours only in that its history has been different (some are very different). A “close parallel” is different as the result of one identifiable historical change. projector: A device that can send a conveyor across quanta. quantum: An “energy level” in 8-dimensional space that contains many alternate timelines. Quantum levels are often abbreviated; e.g., Q7 for Quantum 7. reality quake: A parachronic upheaval that buries some or all of an alternate’s history beneath a new one. The Secret: The fact that technological cross-world travel is possible. Outtimers are not supposed to learn this, unless recruited by Infinity or Interworld. timeline: Another term for an alternate world. weird parallel: An alternate world that has many similarities to our own, but also has differences which make these similarities seem unbelievable (such as a world where intelligent reptiles speak English). zero point: The term for a location that has been “zeroed” – properly calibrated – for a safe conveyor jump between two specific dimensions.
THE CAMPAIGN
In the year 1995, Dr. Paul Van Zandt, a physics professor, built the first working parachronic projector and used it to visit the timeline that became known as Earth-Beta, or simply Beta. He concealed his observations and continued his experiments. Six months later, following a mysterious fire that destroyed his Dartmouth laboratory, he resigned from teaching to set up a “consulting” firm. In fact, Van Zandt had simply freed himself to continue his experiments without the supervision of academia – or of the Department of Defense, which had supplied grant money for his original project. Over the next few years, he refined his theories, contacted 23 more universes, and personally visited six alternate Earths. He also secretly gathered a number of trusted aides, the nucleus of the group that would become Infinity Unlimited. And he founded White Star Trading, an interworld trading corporation, to finance further experiments. In February 1998, Van Zandt made headlines by publishing his results – and by formally incorporating Infinity Unlimited, with subsidiaries including White Star Trading, Parachronic Laboratories, and Infinity Development. Furthermore, Van Zandt offered to license his designs to any government or corporation interested in crosstime travel.
Naturally, governments were outraged. The U.S. Congress immediately moved to nationalize and classify all parachronic technology. The Japanese, European, Chinese, and Russian governments all called for its internationalization and suppression. The next day, Van Zandt addressed a closed session of the U.N. Security Council. No one knows what he said, but the world powers accepted his proposal . . . within certain limits. Infinity Unlimited was organized as a corporation whose formal partners were the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Van Zandt retained the position of first CEO, but Security Council-appointed bureaucrats also sat on its board. Infinity Unlimited’s charter was rewritten to keep control of the basic technology firmly in its hands. Van Zandt won a key victory – almost unnoticed at the time – when he resolved a budget dispute by suggesting that Infinity Unlimited would be largely self-funding: after an initial infusion of funds, it would be “forced” to rely on profits from licensing parachronic technology. Many politicians were pleased that Infinity would not drain resources from the United Nations’ limited funds, and believed this would serve as a cap on the organization’s power. Few in the United Nations or the world appreciated, then, the true potential of the parachronic secret: Infinite worlds, infinite wealth. Infinity also received its own security organization, which Van Zandt insisted on calling the “Infinity Patrol.” Initially small, and limited to protecting Infinity’s exploration teams and installations, its role and power would expand dramatically over time. It took time for the economic and political ramifications to sink in, but the revelation that the Earth existed within a potentially infinite series of alternate worlds shook the foundations of human belief. Science, religion, even the nature of identity was called into question. But some people adapted quickly (others still haven’t), and many saw opportunities. Soon, groups of intrepid explorers were probing the dimensions, led by the vanguard of Infinity Unlimited’s Penetration Service: elite “time scouts” that the corporation recruited for its perilous first-contact missions. Trade opened with dozens of worlds. Natural resources flowed in from the untouched ore deposits of uninhabited alternate Earths. On the world that came to be known as “Homeline,” the environment began to recover as the worst industrial wastes – and the most polluting industries – were sent to dead worlds already blighted beyond anything mankind could do. Political intrigues continued . . . but the economy of Homeline was no longer one of desperate scarcity. Van Zandt retired immediately. “I plan to devote the rest of my life to travel and study,” he said, “and I’m never going to touch a soldering iron again.” For a little while, it looked like the start of a utopia, at least for Homeline. And then the worm peeked out of the multidimensional apple: Centrum, a different reality-spanning culture, with its own ideas of what a utopia should look like. Suddenly, infinite worlds meant infinite trouble . . .
The Interworld Treaty The Interworld Treaty was ratified by most (but not all) U.N. member states. It represented a compromise between the interests of large and small states – and between business interests (championed by an uneasy alliance between Van Zandt and the United States) and U.N. and government bureaucrats. The treaty created a framework that was intended to prevent a “neo-colonial” land rush, limit the ability of governments to deploy military forces crosstime, and permit (but regulate) the commercial exploitation of certain worlds, while preventing crosscultural disasters. The most significant effect of the treaty was to centralize most power in Infinity Unlimited, while ensuring that checks and balances existed that would give the U.N. Security Council – and to a lesser extent, the U.N. Secretary General – a degree of oversight. It works . . . at least, some of the time. Dark Infinity How Van Zandt persuaded the world’s great powers to accede (mostly) to his terms is one of the “big secrets” of the Infinite Worlds setting. Some possibilities: Conspiracy: Infinity Unlimited is the instrument of a vast, ruthless conspiracy that has dominated the corridors of power for centuries. The rise of Infinity was the culmination of centuries of preparation. But who won? Do the Illuminati control it? The Menace from Beyond Time: The world’s leaders caved in because of what Van Zandt showed them. They’ve suppressed this to prevent panic, but perhaps the truth is leaking out. Whatever the truth may be, it’s obviously vitally important that humans spread across many worlds. If the GM wants to have a “new power” invade the hyper-cosmos, there’s plenty of scope. Deus Ex Paramachina: What if Van Zandt is much more than he seems? Could he be a visitor from another, more advanced timeline? A retired, wandering god? A rogue technomancer, exiled from the Four Realms? It seems odd that Infinity and Centrum developed parachronics so close together. Maybe it was planned. If so, who was responsible? Was conflict the goal, or did something go wrong? Maybe Centrum was supposed to be Infinity’s ally . . .
AN INFINITY OF WORLDS
Infinity knows of several hundred alternate worlds, spread through an 8- dimensional space in a pattern that seems almost predictable. These worlds are divided between a number of different “energy levels,” or quanta. It is easy to reach a world on the same quantum, hard to travel outside your own quantum. Homeline is on Quantum 5 (Q5). Infinity can reach Q4 and Q6 fairly easily, and Q3 and Q7 with difficulty. Q2 and below, and Q8 and above, are completely inaccessible. Centrum is located on Q8. They can reach Q7 and Q9 fairly easily, and Q6 and Q10 with difficulty. They cannot reach Q5 and below, or Q11 and above, at all. The known worlds are distributed as follows: Quantum 2 and below: Unknown! Quantum 3: 39 known Earths. Quantum 4: 89 known Earths. Quantum 5: 68 known Earths, including Homeline and Earth-Beta. Quantum 6: 379 known Earths. Quantum 7: 126 known Earths. Quantum 8: 45 known Earths, including Centrum. Quantum 9: 43 known Earths. Quantum 10: 52 known Earths. Quantum 11 and above: Unknown! Parachronic scientists agree that there must be an infinity of alternate worlds, although most are out of reach. They disagree strongly on how big an infinity. Neither Homeline’s nor Centrum’s technology can reach anywhere near an infinite number of worlds. But they are out there . . . somewhere. There are almost certainly undiscovered timelines in all the quanta that Infinity and Centrum can reach. After the first 10 years of exploration, new discoveries settled down to a steady rate of about 10 per year. A common misconception about the “infinite worlds” is that all possibilities must exist on some alternate world, somewhere. Of course, this might be true; until Infinity can reach all possible alternates, it will be hard to disprove. But even if an infinity of worlds exist, there could be many possibilities that don’t exist. As one physicist explained it: “You can have an infinite number of apples without having any oranges.” CLASSES OF ALTERNATE WORLDS Infinity Unlimited’s Penetration Service classifies alternate worlds as follows. Empty There is no intelligent life on the world. It is free for exploitation. Typical uses include colonization (usually on the very best worlds), industry (mostly on bad worlds), hunting preserves (including prehistoric ones!), and research (the whole timeline is set aside as a zoo, science station, etc.). “Disaster worlds” are sometimes exploitable, if only as waste dumps; others are reserved for scientific use. Echoes The Earths in these timelines, all in Quantum 6, seem to be following the “known” course of history exactly, but aren’t as far along in that history as Homeline. These worlds are open for cautious, unobtrusive research and tourism – but if “history is changed,” they shift to other quanta and become parallels. Centrum has been trying to do just that, as part of a program intended to move them closer to their own home dimension. Parallels The Earths in these universes diverged from the “known” course of history at some point. Infinity and Centrum penetrate most such worlds as time and manpower allow. Trade, development, conquest, etc., are possible without risk of a quantum shift. Homeline’s general objective with these worlds is “benevolent guidance” away from war, especially war with weapons of mass destruction – and, somewhat less benevolently, to ensure that they do not discover parachronic travel. Many people disagree with this, but the only coherent alternative anybody has ever come up with is “hands off.” And the idea of, for instance, keeping hands off a parallel-world Hitler, as he is giving the orders for Dachau, is a bit much. Anchors An anchor is similar to an echo, but highly stable. No one is quite sure why – some theories suggest that quantum anchors were the “original” alternate worlds from which others split off. The first anchors were discovered when major interventions in certain Quantum 6 worlds failed to cause shifts. The half-dozen that exist in Q6 are fierce battlegrounds . . . because here, with no risk of a shift occurring, the dimension war can be fought without any subtlety at all. CLOSE PARALLELS A “close parallel” is a world very much like Homeline at some past period, but with small differences. Examples include: Earth-Beta: The first parallel to be discovered. Like Homeline in 2004 in most ways, save for the lack of the crosstime secret. Cherokee: In this world, now in its year 1930, the Cherokee Nation was stronger and more successful in surviving Anglo incursions. When oil was discovered in Oklahoma, the Cherokee kept the land and the wealth – Big Oil is now an Indian-dominated business. Holly: A music-lover’s dream world. Buddy Holly’s plane didn’t crash; in that world, it’s now 1989, and Holly and Ritchie Valens are both still rocking. (The Big Bopper went into politics, and is now in Congress.) Several other stars lived less self-destructive lives, and are still around, although Elvis is still dead. And the Monkees became a super-group, with Stephen Stills as a member. Which One Is Ours? Homeline obviously isn’t “our” present-day world – the defining
change was the discovery of parachronic technology in the 1990s. But Infinity has discovered a couple of early 21st-century Earths, just a couple of decades behind Homeline, which “split off” by not inventing parachronics. There are certainly a few more out there. Since these worlds have technology only a few years away from that of Homeline, the policy is covert observation. If the GM wishes, any of these close parallels could be “our world, our time” – or at least one that is very close to it. Where Am I? It is quite possible for a crosstime traveler to encounter an alternative version of himself (sometimes older or younger) living in one or more close parallels. This offers considerable opportunity for infiltration and subversion, but there’s also the risk that sentiment or narcissism can lead to a traveler losing his objectivity and violating the rules to help out or otherwise influence his “other self.” FARTHER PARALLELS These worlds are considerably more divergent than the close parallels. A few examples (Quantum 5, except where indicated): Attila: The Mongol invasion of Europe crushed Western and Islamic civilization. Eurasia and northern Africa are forest and grassland, ruled by warring nomadic tribes. Some urban civilizations exist in Japan and South America. Campbell: Science-fiction editor John W. Campbell died in a traffic accident early in his career. As a result, many science-fiction writers never developed their talents, and SF didn’t advance much past space opera. Apparently, this reduced the number of students who became interested in science and engineering, because scientific development has stagnated here since the end of WWII. Cornwallis: It is 1984. Revolution failed in America and never came to France. The world is TL6, dominated by conservative, aristocratic monarchies . . . but a new revolution is brewing. Gernsback: A TL(6+2) “technoutopia.” Nikola Tesla married Anne Morgan, daughter of industrialist J.P. Morgan. Backed by Morgan’s money, Tesla’s genius changed the world with inventions such as broadcast power. The transistor and modern electronics are unknown . . . but atomic power, ray guns, dirigibles, and air cars are common. There was no World War II – the League of Nations reigns, guided by the World Science Council. Gernsback is a covert battleground between Centrum and Infinity, each side coveting Gernsback’s wealth (much of its technology, unfortunately, fails to work in other realities). Quantum 7. Johnson’s Rome: The Roman Empire is still intact, and cheerfully decadent, in the year 1206 A.D. . . .and Johnson Crosstime Incorporated is developing it as a vacation spot. The corporation is using systematic bribery and infiltration to take over the Empire. It is already turning a huge profit. Part of the program involves outlawing public tortures and the most brutal forms of gladiatorial combat, but most of the decadent attractions of Rome will remain intact. (There are many other recreational timelines; this is just one of the most successful.) Midgard: A TL4 world. The Vikings conquered Byzantium and used its wealth (and the secret of Greek fire) to overthrow Christendom. It is now 1412: the dawn of a Nordic age of discovery, colonization, and piracy in the Americas. Quantum 7. Ming-3: In our world, China turned its back on exploration in the 15th century. In Ming-3, it did not. It is now 1859, and the Middle Kingdom (currently TL5) rules a global empire. Quantum 7. The Thousand-Year Reich: The common science-fiction nightmare of a Nazi victory in World War II exists on five known alternates in Q4 and Q5. The U.N., aided by Infinity, recruits and infiltrates agents into two of the “earlier” ones (local dates 1952 and 1961), with the hope of overthrowing the Axis governments. Two more are further along: one in 1970, and one in 1988. These are under careful observation. The 1988 world is actually less advanced than the 1970 one, having suffered a Third World War in which the Nazis destroyed Japan with nuclear weapons and lost many major cities in Europe and North America. The fifth and most worrisome Nazi world is Reich-5; see p. 543 for details. WEIRD PARALLELS A “weird parallel” is an alternate that resembles Homeline in many ways, but with such strange differences that it is hard to believe the similarities. According to parachronic physicists, these similarities are the reason why otherwise-improbable worlds are sometimes found on accessible quantum levels. United States of Lizardia: The first weird parallel discovered by Infinity. “United States of Lizardia” (USL for short) is Homeline’s name. Its inhabitants call it Earth, and in some ways, it’s similar to 21st-century Earth . . . except that mammals never became dominant. The natives are bipedal, dinosaur-descended lizard men. Their most powerful nation is analogous to the United States, and occupies North America. Infinity’s Penetration Service is covertly studying it. Orichalcum: The legendary Empire of Atlantis exists alongside Heroic-Age Greece and Egypt. An island nation in the Atlantic, its inhabitants are blessed by the gods and skilled in many crafts – including the working of the wondermetal orichalcum. This is a TL1-2 alternate Earth in Quantum 6. Dead Worlds A “dead world” is an alternate Earth where life never developed. In some cases, Earth is at a different distance from the sun, or has no moon. Dead worlds do not have breathable atmospheres. Over a dozen of these worlds are known. They can be exploited for mineral wealth. They are also a convenient dumping ground for wastes too loathsome to keep on the same world with any human being. MYTH PARALLELS Some parallel worlds correspond – far too closely for coincidence – to myths or fiction of Homeline. On such a world, Robin Hood might be a real, living person, waging guerrilla war on the Sheriff of Nottingham . . . or mermaids might be real and common. The most logical explanation is that some writers are psychics or world-jumpers.
Most “myth” parallels are closed to everyone but researchers . . . except for the Robin Hood world, called “Nottingham.” Infinity researchers decided fairly quickly that Robin Hood had just been a lot more “real” than anyone thought. That world is now a popular Time Tours destination. HELL PARALLELS “Hell parallels” is a general term for the distressingly large number of alternate worlds that have suffered some great disaster or holocaust. Some are closed due to continuing hazards; others are open to exploitation or research. Nuclear War More than 20 post-apocalyptic Earths are known, including a dead, radioactive planet; a dying world in the grip of nuclear winter; and a world where humanity has been knocked back into the Stone Age. On a few worlds, nuclear radiation seems to work differently, accelerating the evolution of those who survived the war; all but two of these are off limits. And on one world, Ragnarok, Infinity scouts arrived 10 years after the war and discovered about 20,000 survivors huddled in fallout shelters and isolated bases. In a massive humanitarian effort, these survivors were ferried to an uninhabited timeline and helped to get back on their feet. Disease On at least four known alternates, disease has wiped out or nearly wiped out mankind. Three of these worlds were depopulated by deliberate biological warfare. They are strictly off limits, their coordinates a secret (and with good reason: in two cases, the first scout died despite all precautions). The fourth world, called Ariane, was hit by mutant influenza in its year 1915, with over 99.9% mortality. The virus is fully controllable with TL8 medicine, and Ariane is being colonized, looted, and developed, despite occasional skirmishes with tribes of TL2 survivors. Cosmic Catastrophe A very large meteorite struck Lucifer-1, in Quantum 7, about 100 years ago. Few traces of human civilization survived. Continuing volcanism has rendered its air nearly unbreathable in most areas. Lucifer-3 is worse: the surface of Earth – and quite possibly every world within several hundred light years – was sterilized by radiation from a nearby supernova or gamma-ray burster. Homeliners are systematically looting the ruins of its TL7 human civilization for surviving art treasures and refined raw materials. On Taft-3, massive solar flares caused sterility and a more gradual collapse of civilization. Ecological Disaster Several worlds appear to have been devastated by over-industrialization and careless exploitation at the hands of their human or other inhabitants – some recently, others long ago. On Lenin-2, this led to global warming, flooding, heavy weather, and a massive famine; the few million survivors are now living at TL3. Other Roads to Hell Other worlds have suffered a wide variety of more unusual disasters: Drexler: “Gray goo” nanomachines devoured civilization (and the first scout). Leviathan: Humanity is fighting a losing battle against an undersea civilization. Steel: Mankind developed sapient machines in the 2010s. These rose up and exterminated most of humanity. Now it is 2026: a war-ravaged, postapocalyptic Earth is divided into several Zones, ruled by rival artificial intelligences . . . the Zone Minds. Only a few pockets of human resistance remain. Worse, the arms race between rival Zones is spurring rapid technological development (they’re now TL9). Centrum and Infinity both fear that at least one AI is researching parachronic technology, and are (separately) debating whether to secretly assist the human resistance forces. WORLDS THAT BREAK THE RULES There are a few worlds where physical laws don’t work in the way we think of as “normal.” The best known of these are the universes where crosstime travel itself works differently. For instance, Homeline and Centrum are the only known timelines from which a projector can operate, while Coventry (p. 540) cannot be reached by any means except a projector. There are others with differences that have nothing to do with parachronics; for instance, the universes where superscience allows physical “impossibilities,” such as gravity control or faster-than-light travel. In some cases, it’s biology that follows different rules, allowing tiny humans or colossal beasts to exist. And a few worlds are even stranger. There are timelines where no technology higher than “simple mechanics” works. This is because it is impossible to produce an artificial electrical discharge there . . . even though natural discharges work just fine. This gives scientists fits: how do the physical laws “know” the difference? The bestknown example, Rustic, was discovered by a world-jumper. If a conveyor had gone there instead, it wouldn’t have been able to return. There are even worlds where psychic powers exist (Infinity is wary of any world with mind readers, for obvious reasons). Likewise, there are a few where magic works . . . and not always the same way. Such worlds are closed except to elite researchers and agents, and their existence is secret. But there are the inevitable rumors; for instance, many people believe that some Patrol agents have learned magic in order to function more effectively when visiting magical universes. Of late, scouts are discovering more and more “rule-breaking” worlds – perhaps because most of the “close” worlds have already been found. Or maybe something is
happening to reality. GMs are encouraged to dream up such worlds as needed! Two examples: Merlin: A close parallel until 1945, when the first A-bomb test created a huge, permanent banestorm in New Mexico. This resulted in a zone of high mana in the American Southwest, and a region of normal mana encompassing much of North and Central America. Magical fallout triggered the appearance of “supernatural” creatures. The United States has become a technomagic superpower that frightens even Infinity. Merlin is a TL7-8 alternate Earth in Quantum 3. Yrth: A quantum sargasso (see Marooned!, p. 546) accidentally discovered by an Infinity world-jumper a few years ago. He had many adventures before finding a magical artifact that allowed him to escape! Yrth is a TL3 “medieval fantasy” world where powerful magic works in a reliable fashion. Elves, dwarves, goblins, dragons, and several other mythical races exist there. Humans are dominant, but local legends suggest that they are not the original natives. Infinity believes that a banestorm must have transported members of several human cultures to Yrth – either from Homeline during the Middle Ages or from a medieval echo. POCKET MULTIVERSES “You know, back home, I’m a god.” A “pocket multiverse” is a set of closely coupled dimensions that share a set of inhabitants and metaphysical laws. Working magic is likely, but not certain. The typical pocket multiverse consists of one baseline physical reality (which might contain an alternate Earth) and one or more attached alternate dimensions or interpenetrating planes populated by magical beings or spirits. There is often a “void” that surrounds all these dimensions. Many pocket multiverses house powerful, even omnipotent godlike beings. Most such entities are tied to their realm and cannot leave – at least, not without leaving behind most of their power. However, magic or technology from outside the multiverse might allow these gods or their servants to leave. And rarely, a pocket multiverse “absorbs” another reality, bringing it inside the gods’ domain! A simple example of a pocket multiverse is a regular physical universe containing a parallel Earth; an interpenetrating, superimposed spirit world; and two alternate dimensions, a heaven and a hell. In this system, people who die really do go on to their punishment or reward; ghosts and spirits prowl the space between; angels and demons are quite real; and there may be a Creator. Infinity researchers find operating in pocket multiverses complex, difficult, and dangerous. Parachronic technology does not always function in all parts of these systems!
INTERDIMENSIONAL TRAVEL The keys to crossworld travel are the parachronic projector, which can move matter between timelines, and the parachronic conveyor, which facilitates such transport. There are also nontechnological means of travel between worlds. PARACHRONIC CONVEYORS A “parachronic conveyor” is a vehicle for interdimensional travel. There are different styles, but all involve an enclosed hull containing a parachronic field generator, a power system, and a control system. Hull Type Capsule: The standard conveyor is basically an enclosed box. It may be disguised for covert operations – for instance, as a hut, covered wagon, shed, phone booth, or trailer. Mobile: Some conveyors are functioning, mobile vehicles. These usually mass from 1 to 20 tons, although larger and smaller designs exist. “Mobot”: An unmanned, robot-controlled vehicle. These are still experimental; Homeline cannot yet build a really robust artificial intelligence. Parachronic Field Generator A conveyor’s generator may have subquantum, quantum, or two-quantum range. No one has yet developed a conveyor with greater range. The generator also has a mass capacity: the maximum mass it can transport. The mass of the conveyor (including the generator) and its payload cannot safely exceed this limit. The capabilities of the generator largely determine the cost of the conveyor, which is usually very high. This isn’t all for the circuitry – much of the cost is licensing fees! Subquantum Conveyors: These can jump between destinations at the same quantum level. Base cost is $10 million. Each ton of capacity adds $10 million and 10 lbs. LC2. Quantum Conveyors: These can jump between destinations at the same quantum level. With the help of a projector, they can jump to or from adjacent quantum levels as well. Base cost is $20 million. Each ton of capacity adds $150 million and 10 lbs. LC1. Two-Quantum Conveyors: These work like quantum conveyors, but can jump up to two quantum levels with the aid of a projector. Two-quantum jumps are always tricky! Base cost is $30 million. Each ton of capacity adds $300 million and 30 lbs. LC0. Power System A jump requires 200 kJ of energy per ton of capacity – delivered in a single pulse. A typical pulsed power system for the field generator costs $50 and weighs 5 lbs. per kJ. Control System A conveyor may have one of two types of control system: Fixed: The conveyor can only jump between two specific realities, whose coordinates are hardwired. The operator cannot change these settings. This type of conveyor is typical of those available to most corporations, private users, etc. who have proper licenses. LC2.
Programmable: The conveyor can jump to any reality within its range. To accomplish this, the operator must enter the coordinates into its guidance system manually. These units are much more tightly controlled. LC0. Conveyor Operation An unassisted parachronic conveyor can only jump to timelines in the same quantum. For a long-range conveyor to jump to a different quantum, it requires the assistance of a parachronic projector (see below). For a safe jump, the total mass of the conveyor and its payload cannot exceed the field generator’s capacity. A typical conveyor, after subtracting its own mass, can transport anywhere from 500 to 2,000 lbs. of occupants and cargo. A conveyor jump requires a lot of energy in a single pulse – more than a TL8 vehicular power plant can deliver. The necessary pulsed power system accounts for about half the mass of a conveyor. It can deliver enough energy for a single jump, after which it must be recharged. Most conveyors have an onboard fuel cell that can replenish the energy bank in about 30 minutes. This means the conveyor can’t return immediately after making a jump! A conveyor needs to be programmed with the precise parachronic coordinates of both its location and its destination. If a conveyor gets lost, it’s in trouble: the crew may know where to go, but not how to get there from their current position. Finding the coordinates of a new universe is a huge research project, taking years of effort. Infinity and Centrum both have the parachronic coordinates of several hundred universes on file. In Homeline, most are publicly available, but some (for closed worlds, or those known to be controlled by Centrum) are secret. Parachronic coordinates are used in conjunction with the actual spacetime location of the conveyor to plot a “parachronic course.” A different “jump program” is required for each location in real space (e.g., Times Square, New York) and each set of parachronic coordinates (e.g., Homeline to Earth-Beta). Infinity Unlimited charges about $500 for a pre-plotted jump program, from a commercial I-Port to the equivalent location in the target universe. To create a custom jump program (e.g., to depart from your garage in Queens instead of from Times Square) takes 5 to 10 days of supercomputer time . . . at a cost of $1 million to $20 million. For this reason, most legitimate travelers use the I-Ports. Just prior to departure, the conveyor’s operator must perform final jump calibrations to correct for local conditions and the conveyor’s current mass. Solar neutrino and cosmic ray density, local electrical and magnetic fields, and similar factors can all influence the jump; a good operator will compensate, taking 10 minutes. The operator can take more or less time; see Time Spent (p. 346) for the effects on the skill roll for the jump. Finally, the operator hits the “jump” button! This activates the conveyor’s generator. (If the jump requires a projector, he hits the “ready” button instead. The conveyor jumps as soon as the projector’s field is focused on it.) The conveyor vanishes, to reappear at the same point in space in a different universe.
Parachronic Coordinates Levels of several different types of parachronic energy determine a world’s “parachronic coordinates.” The most important of these is the “T-Gamma force,” which has levels that only come in whole numbers. Suppose the T-Gamma force equation were composed of two numbers – there are really hundreds, but suppose it were only two. The formula for Homeline might be 5 + 0 = 5, so it is in Quantum 5. The formula for Earth-Beta, a close parallel, might be 4 + 1 = 5, so it’s also in Q5. The next world might be 3 + 2 = 5, which is still in Q5. These similar formulas give the same result – 5 – so the associated worlds are similar to Homeline, as well as nearby. But a world might also have a formula of 25/5 = 5, or -5 ¥ -1 = 5, which gives 5 in a very different way. Such worlds are still in Q5, but very different. By the same analogy, a parallel that is in Q7 but still very similar to Homeline might have the formula 7 + 0 = 7.
Parachronic Detectors A “parachronic detector” is a device that can detect an incoming jump. To do so, it must be on the same reality as the jump, and the jump must occur within its range (see below). Roll against the operator’s Electronic Operations (Sensors) skill. Success gives a bearing. Two or more stations within range can triangulate and determine the jumper’s location to within a few percent of the actual range. The sensor also records the jump’s reality disturbance. An hour’s analysis and a successful Physics (Parachronic) roll will reveal the source of the jump – conveyor, projector, or “anomalous” (e.g., a spell) – and its quantum of origin. A day’s work and a roll at -5 identifies the reality of origin, if the researcher is familiar with it. The portable unit most often carried by Infinity Patrol agents costs $560,000 and weighs 56 lbs.; it the size of a large backpack, and has a 1,000-yard range. Larger models are $1 million and 200 lbs. per mile of range. When Infinity or Centrum takes over a timeline, standard operating procedure is to deploy a network of long-range detectors. However, their expense means that few worlds have total coverage. It is generally only cost-effective to deploy them in major centers.
PARACHRONIC PROJECTORS A “parachronic projector” is a device that enables a quantum or twoquantum conveyor to cross quanta. It consists of an enclosed “stage” surrounded by equipment. It can be set to dispatch or retrieve a conveyor. A projector’s size depends on how much mass it can move. Van Zandt’s first projector filled a large laboratory. The largest modern projectors can move up to 300 tons at once, and occupy most of a city block. An “average” projector requires enough hardware to fill a small auditorium, and can move two tons. A projector requires a great deal of energy to operate. This can get expensive, but for a large projector, the cost per unit of mass remains low enough to be negligible – even when moving relatively low-value items, such as grain and ore. Projectors are very costly. Infinity quotes a base price of $100 million for the simplest installation with a two-ton capacity; prices only go up from there. Thus, only governments, eccentric billionaires, and large corporations can afford their own projectors. But since the cost to transport people and goods is relatively low, projectors routinely handle a dozen transits per day. Projector Operation In order for a projector to dispatch a conveyor, the conveyor must be positioned on the projector’s stage and “ready”: programmed, poweredup, etc.
To retrieve a conveyor, the projector must be focused on a specific universe within two quanta. If a “ready” conveyor in the target universe occupies a point congruent with the stage, the projector snatches it back. Since “real time” interdimensional communication is impossible, retrieval operations rely on setting pickup times and alternates. For example, a cautious penetration expedition might arrange to have a projector turned on once every 24 hours. If they don’t want pickup, they won’t power up their conveyor. It is relatively straightforward to use a projector to dispatch or retrieve a quantum or two-quantum conveyor over a one-quantum distance (e.g., from Q5 to Q4 or Q6, or vice versa), provided the conveyor has an operating, calibrated field generator. To dispatch or retrieve a two-quantum conveyor over a two-quantum distance (e.g., from Q5 to Q3 or Q7, or vice versa) is trickier. A conveyor with an operating, calibrated field generator isn’t enough – transit is only possible under special conditions, and these can only be predicted about four hours in advance. (Every hour, roll 3d. On a result of 7 or less, an hour-long window will open in four hours.) Only the computers and instruments on the projector can make this prediction; those in the conveyor have no option but to prepare for pickup and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. OPERATIONS AND ACCIDENTS When a conveyor jumps, roll against the operator’s Electronics Operation (Parachronic) skill to see how the trip went. On a projectorassisted trip, both the projector operator and the conveyor operator must roll. Modifiers: -3 or worse for damaged equipment. Electrical disturbances give a penalty, from -2 for severe electrical storms or solar flares to -6 for the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear blast! (“Hardening” the electronics won’t remove this modifier – this is an environmental effect, not equipment damage.) On a success, the conveyor instantly disappears from its starting universe and reappears at the same point in the destination universe. On a failure, by either the conveyor operator or the projector operator, something went wrong! Usually, the transit happens anyway . . . but not as planned. Roll 1d – or 2d, for a twoquantum jump – and add it to the operator’s margin of failure. If the conveyor and projector operators both failed, add their margins of failure! If the conveyor is overloaded, increase the total by one or more. Then look up the result on the table below. 2 – Timing error. Trip takes 1d minutes from the viewpoint of those “outside.” There is no way to tell a simple timing error from a totally lost shipment . . . so any delay triggers a security alert, just in case! This is why parachronic operators have ulcers.* 3 – Timing error. Trip takes 1d minutes from the viewpoint of both those in transit and those “outside.”* 4 – Timing error. Trip takes 4d minutes from the viewpoint of those “outside.”* 5 – Timing error. Trip takes 4d minutes from the viewpoint of both those in transit and those “outside.”* 6 – Positional error. Conveyor appears 1d feet too low, or off to one side. Minor damage to conveyor or projector, but not to passengers or cargo (unless it is very fragile).†‡ 7 – Resonance error. Shipment appears and then vanishes, reappearing where it was coming from. A repeated attempt is allowed, but at -1 to skill.† 8-9 – Field-strength error. Electrical discharges do 1d-2 burning damage to all personnel, and temporarily disable all unshielded electronic equipment. The conveyor’s field generator is disabled until it receives major repairs.† 10 – Positional error. Conveyor appears too high. The fall inflicts 1d crushing damage on each passenger and to breakable cargo. The conveyor’s generator is damaged: -3 on trips until it gets minor repairs.†‡ 11– Severe positional error. As 10, but falling damage is 2d and the conveyor’s generator is disabled until it receives major repairs.†‡ 12 – Focus error. The conveyor goes somewhere unintended. It will appear in the same place, geographically, but it could be on any of an infinite number of timelines. Roll 1d: 1-3 means it’s on the right quantum level but in a different timeline; 4-5 means it’s on an adjacent quantum level; and 6 means it’s two quantum levels off. It will take days, weeks, or even months for the computers at Infinity (or Centrum) to deduce its location. Until then, there is no way to retrieve it. If a projector was involved, there is also a 2-in-6 chance that something will arrive on the stage from a random crosstime location. It might be air, rubble, an artifact, or a living being . . . and it might be dangerous. In anything but an emergency, the projector will be taken offline for 1d days while researchers gather data (the hope is to build a controllable “snatcher” projector someday!).†‡ 13 – Matrix error. The conveyor arrives in small pieces – it is totally destroyed. Grain, ore, etc., is unaffected; other cargo is killed or destroyed. The GM may wish to “fudge” this result for PCs (treating it as 12 or 14, as desired).† 14 or more – Utter confusion! Roll twice more and apply both results. If either of these new rolls results in 14 or more, see Fascinating Parachronic Disasters (below) instead.† * Travel time between worlds is theoretically zero. Sometimes, for no known reason, a trip seems to take longer. And sometimes, a trip seems instantaneous to the passengers but takes time from the point of view of the people on either end! † When one of these results comes up, roll 1d: on a 1 or a 6, nothing happens; on 2-5, the corresponding timedelay result from the table (2 through 5) occurs as well. ‡ If this error would mean that the conveyor materializes inside a solid object, anything it displaces simply vanishes. No one has yet explained where it goes. This means that it is very foolish to stand on a projector stage or within the area corresponding to the focus of a projector! You could vanish. Worse, part of you could vanish.
Fascinating Parachronic Disasters Roll 2d and consult the table below whenever result 14 comes up twice in succession on the previous table. Several of these results assume living cargo; reroll these if sending inanimate cargo. Some of these results appear to violate parachronic science. Many of them have not happened to Infinity . . . yet. A hazard associated with any such event is the mob of researchers that instantly appear – to take possession of all equipment involved, and to debrief all witnesses to within an inch of their lives. 2 – Trip takes centuries, or even millennia, from the viewpoint of the shipment. Much less time passes for the “outside” world. Survival of living beings is unlikely – they might arrive and then crumble to dust! Rather than killing off PCs, the GM is free to substitute other temporal oddities, such as aging in reverse. Finding a cure could be an interesting adventure. 3 – Trip takes a very long time from the passengers’ mental perspective, but no time from their physical perspective. Each passenger gains 3d points in assorted mental quirks and disadvantages, assigned by the GM in accordance with the passenger’s personality. (This has happened twice.) 4 – Signal error. Living things arrive safely . . . except that everyone’s mind ends up in the wrong body. This may be permanent, or it might wear off in 1d days. See Mind Transfer (p. 296) for the effects of mind swapping. 5 – Tau-factor error. Shipment appears as a “mirror image” of itself. Ores are unaffected. Foodstuffs are inedible. Living passengers acquire the Restricted Diet and Unusual Biochemistry disadvantages, and require a special diet to survive. If they are far from Homeline, all Survival rolls are at -5, reduced to -2 once someone realizes (from GM clues) what has happened. (This has happened twice, and is suspected in two other cases where the crew of a lost conveyor starved in “friendly” surroundings.) 6 – Frog error. The shipment arrives in a rain of tiny frogs, or some other bizarre “Fortean” phenomena. (This has happened six times, and four Infinity researchers have gone mad trying to explain it.) 7 – Bio-field error. All nonliving material in the shipment – including the conveyor – disintegrates or is lost elsewhere. This can leave travelers embarrassed or stranded, depending on whether they were arriving at a projector stage or leaving one. 8 – Living beings experience brief telepathy. Each passenger acquires 20 points worth of Telepathy abilities (see Chapter 6); the GM assigns these randomly. These last 1d days – roll separately for each person. (This has happened twice . . . that Infinity knows of.) 9 – The shipment appears twice, 1d minutes apart. (This has happened once; fortunately, it was an uncrewed conveyor. The second conveyor displaced the first one when it was partially unloaded. Was the duplicate some sort of “mirror” effect, or was it from another timeline? It is unknown what would have happened had there been passengers. Would they have been duplicated?) 10 – The shipment or conveyor is switched with a very similar shipment or conveyor belonging to Centrum (or to Homeline, if the mission was Centrum’s). 11 – The shipment or conveyor is switched with a very similar shipment or conveyor belonging to some other, as yet unsuspected, race of crossworld travelers. 12 – The shipment or conveyor is switched with a shipment or conveyor belonging to some completely alien dimension-traveling culture. Mass is unchanged, but nothing else need be the same! Damaged Conveyors Failed jumps, accidents, sabotage, and attacks can all damage a conveyor. Depending on its hull, a conveyor might be as flimsy as tinfoil or as robust as a tank – but should any damage penetrate its DR, assume that there is a 1-in-6 chance of significant damage to its delicate parachronic hardware. The dramatic effect of damage is more important than the specifics. As a rule of thumb, it usually reduces the conveyor’s capabilities: the conveyor still functions, but at -3 or worse to all Electronics Operation (Parachronic) rolls.
Severe damage (GM’s decision) may cripple the conveyor completely. Until repairs are made, it cannot make a subquantum jump itself, nor can a projector retrieve it. In effect, it is “stranded.” Lost Conveyors A conveyor can become entirely lost – that is, fail to arrive where it was expected – for a variety of reasons. These boil down to “operator error” and “bad luck.” If someone on Homeline was retrieving the conveyor with a projector, or expecting it to return under its own power, its loss will be noticed immediately. If the conveyor was outbound from Homeline, the time before its loss is noticed depends on the shipment. Loss of a regular supply run to a major base will be reported as soon as possible, by sending a message capsule to the other end. However, it might take days or weeks to notice the loss of an exploration mission! The sooner a conveyor’s loss is noticed, the better the chances of recovery. The Infinity Unlimited computers can get to work on the problem, taking into account every known variable, down to the exact mass and capacitance of the conveyor. Sometimes, they can predict where it might have appeared. If they’re lucky, this is a charted, habitable timeline. But sometimes it isn’t. Occasionally, the computers predict an uncharted location. In fact, this is how several new timelines were discovered. Even so, being randomly dumped onto a brand-new timeline, while it makes a great adventure, is a trip most travelers would rather avoid. Lost/Moved Timelines This is not “operator error” – but when it happens, it causes operator headaches! See Timeline Shifts (p. 544). Paradoxes Paradoxes don’t happen, because parachronic travel is not true time travel. However, in an “echo” – a timeline that duplicates Homeline’s history – any intervention that changes the flow of events can cause a quantum shift: an expensive nuisance at best, a disaster at worst. See Timeline Shifts (p. 544). That said, a continuing nightmare of more imaginative types is this: What if one of the historical parallels is somehow Homeline’s past, and visitors change it without noticing? But that hasn’t happened . . . yet.
NATURAL PARACHRONIC PHENOMENA There are several unusual “natural” phenomena that can reach across dimensions. Banestorms A “banestorm” is a localized event that transports everyone within a certain area to another dimension. The phenomenon is most often circular, and may range in size from a few yards to a few miles across. On a planet with an atmosphere, it tends to manifest as a thick fog bank, mysterious thundercloud, heavy electrical storm, etc. that builds up slowly (e.g., a fog rolls in and blocks all light) and vanishes suddenly. When a banestorm vanishes, so does everyone within its radius. These “passengers” reappear . . . elsewhere. And unlike a parachronic conveyor, a banestorm does not always transport its passengers to a spatial location that corresponds to their point of origin in their home dimension. Some geographical locations seem to be “preferred” pickup or delivery points. These places often earn a reputation – the Bermuda Triangle, for example.
There are few consistent patterns beyond this. Some worlds seem to be more prone to banestorm manifestations than others – and on a given world, certain locations seem to be unusually susceptible. Multiple banestorms can strike simultaneously. Researchers know of at least two special types of banestorm: Twin banestorms exchange matter from two dimensions. A large landbased event can even exchange terrain between worlds. Permanent banestorms transform an area of a single physical reality into one in which two dimensions co-mingle. This often has an effect on the area’s mana level, increasing it for hundreds or even thousands of miles around. No one knows what causes any type of banestorm. Theories include: Banestorms are magical. Some evidence suggests that banestorms are magical in nature. Divination can often predict them. Powerful ritual magic can sometimes even summon them. Magic seems to be less successful at controlling them, however . . . Banestorms are technological. Parachronic technology can certainly detect banestorms; a parachronic detector (p. 532) “goes crazy” 1d minutes before one appears. There is considerable debate as to whether parachronic technology can cause them. Parachronic Laboratories (p. 538) believes it might be possible to create an artificial banestorm using a “parachronic bomb” – but if they’ve got one, they don’t admit it. Some theories suggest that any use of parachronic technology may intensify or even cause banestorms. And some evidence suggests that the technology need not be parachronic: on one world, Merlin, the first nuclear detonation to take place triggered a permanent banestorm. Banestorms are alive. A few researchers believe that banestorms are living things! Reality Quakes Unlike a timeline shift (see p. 544), a “reality quake” is a parachronic convulsion that overturns the past of a given world, rewriting reality and changing its established history. This would normally go unnoticed, except that fragments of the previous past (“reality shards”) often still remain, persisting as bizarre memories, inexplicable amnesia, or anomalous artifacts – especially in the “fracture zone,” the name given to the “epicenter” where the two histories began to diverge. Some reality shards are even human – legendary figures, mysterious strangers, or individuals “duplicated” across worlds. Extremely powerful reality quakes sometimes overturn both the past and future of a world, hurling reality shards into nearby parallels. Nexus Portals A “nexus portal” is a hole leading from one dimension to another. It is usually circular and less than 10 yards across, and allows light to pass through from both ends (that is, you can see its destination). Like a conveyor, a portal crosses realities without crossing space. Most portals are two-way: you can enter or leave at will. Some, however, are one-way: you can enter but you can’t leave. If you stick a limb or object partway through, you can’t retrieve it – it’s stuck until you or the object go all the way through. A portal might be further qualified as: Open: The portal is always present and can be traversed freely. Periodic: The portal only appears sometimes: every full moon, once per century, etc. If it’s two-way, the way out usually has the same cycle. Locked: The portal only appears in the presence of a specific “key” – usually a magical or technological artifact. A parachronic detector or world-jumper can detect its presence. Summonable: The portal only appears when summoned. This requires a specific action, which might be mundane (touch a specific object) or complex (use a specific sacred dagger to perform a blood sacrifice). Most such portals only remain open for a brief period after being summoned. Variable: The portal is a junction between more than two realities. The destination might be random or selectable (via a key or action). If two people want to go to the same place, they should hold tight as they pass through! Hidden: A hidden portal is invisible – you can step through it without realizing it was there. Such portals are often one-way! A parachronic detector can sense a hidden portal only at 1/100 its normal range – and only when the portal is actually used to traverse a dimension. A world-jumper can sense a hidden portal in his line of sight on an IQ roll. Shiftrealms Some geographical features (and a few man-made structures) are “unstuck” in reality. They shift between worlds, either randomly or on a regular cycle. These “shiftrealms” may appear and vanish entirely, or overlay or switch places with local reality. They can range in size from individual rooms to entire worlds. Researchers believe this may account for tales of mysterious vanishing islands (such as Avalon and Huy Breasil) and haunted forests.
Dimensional Highways A “dimensional highway” is a path that runs across dimensions. Researching its history often reveals that it follows ancient straight tracks, ley lines, etc. At points along the road, nexus portals exist. These are usually periodic or locked, and as wide as the road itself. The road might end at a portal in one dimension and resume at a portal in the next – or it might continue in the original world as well, and after a stretch, lead to another portal to a third reality, and so on. Who built the roads? Nobody knows . . .
Infinity’s World Classes Infinity applies one of the following formal classifications to each timeline. Open The world is open to visitation and colonization. Protectorate The world is a populated parallel under the protection and control of Infinity Unlimited or the United Nations. Depending on the world’s status, limited trade and contact may be possible. Research The world is set aside for study. Most such worlds are parallels. Types include: Anomalies: Worlds that show some interesting but not obviously dangerous variations in physical laws. Cultural Preserves: Worlds left as “controls” to judge the effect of intervention on other, similar timelines. Nature Preserves: Worlds with interesting wildlife, such as dinosaurs . . . or dragons. Primitives: Parallel worlds inhabited by Bronze Age or earlier man. (There is continuing pressure to allow more exploitation of these worlds.) Closed The world is “off limits” to absolutely everyone save a few chosen researchers or Penetration Service agents . . . mostly because they pose a potential danger to Homeline. Infinity tries to keep the very existence of these worlds secret. Reasons for this include: Hell Parallels: Timelines depopulated by uncontrollable disease, nanotech gone awry, or forces not yet understood. See p. 528. High-Tech and Aggressive: The world would present an obvious danger if the locals learned about crosstime travel. The Nazi-dominated “Reich” parallels are the best example. Mysterious Forces: Worlds that harbor magic, widespread psionics, or any ability under the general heading “super powers.” Nonhuman Intelligence: Timelines in which aliens are the dominant species. Ultra-Tech: When a world has technology more advanced than Homeline’s (or Centrum’s), it is considered hazardous even if its culture seems benign. The researchers’ objective here, of course, is to learn the native science without being caught! No Earths with interstellar travel have been discovered so far. War Zone: The world is the site of a major struggle between Infinity and Centrum, or between different native factions. There are a few “special” closed worlds that don’t fit into any of the categories above; e.g., a mysterious parallel where the inhabitants suddenly began to shrink. They are usually closed for good, one-of-a-kind reasons!
INFINITY UNLIMITED
Infinity Unlimited, usually called “Infinity,” is the multinational corporate entity through which Homeline exploits the fruits of – and tries to control – parachronic technology. It is a huge, wealthy organization. It is not always efficient, but it is effective. Infinity operates under the joint auspices of the United Nations Interworld Council (consisting of the ambassadors of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council) and its own board of directors. The board is half elected by Infinity’s own shareholders, half appointed by the Council. Infinity owns, and has the right to police, all parachronic equipment. When others build such equipment, they do so by permission. Any use of projectors is under Infinity’s direct supervision, and licensing fees are required. Infinity has the power to confiscate or destroy any unauthorized conveyor or projector – but in practice this right is limited when the device is in the hands of major powers operating on Homeline. Infinity considers itself the custodian of all other timelines – although its practical hegemony extends only through Q4, Q5, and Q6. Its subsidiaries have a monopoly on the research and penetration of new timelines. As the “legal guardian” of the alternate worlds, Infinity leases development rights to other Homeline entities: governments, corporations, or even individuals. In effect, Infinity regards itself as the owner of any world below TL6, and limits or forbids contact with worlds of higher TL. Infinity also requires that outtime interlopers “better the lot” of the people whose worlds they infiltrate and use. This is often interpreted very loosely . . . Infinity’s ability to enforce these policies is strong but hardly absolute. Many interests explore and exploit timelines clandestinely, simply because it is so profitable to find and monopolize a new world! Infinity has a number of subsidiary organizations. Each performs a different task. They try to cooperate closely, but communications breakdowns and low-level infighting are not unknown. Additionally, no matter how carefully Infinity screens its employees, there is always the chance that Centrum infiltrators, government and corporate spies, and ordinary thieves are among them – leading to adventures with no outside enemy.
Crosstime Recruitment Homeline and Centran crosstime organizations often employ locals, but they do so through front organizations – the outtimers have no clue that they’re working for extradimensional bosses. In fact, it’s a serious crime for anyone to divulge The Secret to an outtimer. However, the Infinity Patrol has limited authority to recruit talented outtimers. Its Centran equivalent, Interworld, enjoys similar powers. Crosstime recruitment is supposed to occur only when an outtimer’s talents are deemed to be a significant asset to the organization. A field agent who recruits a local will have to justify his actions to a board of inquiry. In practice, tolerance depends on the situation. World-jumpers (p. 544) are an exception. They’re so valuable that every effort will be made to recruit them, no matter where they’re from. On the other hand, there have been cases where recruitment was initiated for personal reasons. For instance, an undercover Time Scout might fall in love with a talented outtimer and use his influence to recruit her into the service. In a case like this, Infinity might go along in order to keep a good agent . . . but it is more likely to court-martial the offender and send both lovers off to Coventry (p. 540). The Patrol expects all recruits to go through training and indoctrination, and watches them carefully to ensure that they remain reliable. An outtime recruit whose true loyalties remained with his homeworld would be a great liability. ISWAT Interworld Special Weapons and Tactics, or ISWAT, is the elite black-ops section of the Infinity Patrol. It specializes in operations on closed worlds, weird parallels, and pocket multiverses, and routinely performs high-priority but deniable missions that can determine the fate of entire worlds. ISWAT has an undisclosed number of operatives, who work in small teams. Some are highly trained I-Cops or special operations troops . . . but the majority are outtimers recruited for their unique talents. Rumor has it that these include famous historical or mythical figures plucked from alternate worlds; wizards, psis, and supers; nonhumans (including undead); slumming angels and reformed demons; and even retired pagan demigods. Many of these rumors are true. ISWAT ops have three things in common: a dedication to the nebulously defined ideals of “peace and freedom,” a love for action, and a very tight personal loyalty to their team members. The eight iconic characters on pp. 307-323 make up an ISWAT team. Such a team is an ideal PC group for very free-wheeling adventure. Does Centrum have its own ISWAT? That’s a very good question.
INFINITY DEVELOPMENT This joint U.N.-Infinity organization is responsible for parceling out “trading territories” among the timelines. When a new world is opened for commercial exploitation, interested parties must submit bids to ID. Cash is just one consideration; bidders must also show how they will protect the local environment and population, keep security, and so forth. Outtime installations are always subject to inspection by ID bureaucrats, I-Cops, or both. Many Homeline organizations object strongly to the implication that Infinity “owns” the other timelines . . . but that’s the way it works. INFINITY PATROL The Infinity Patrol is the “operations” branch of Infinity. In theory, it is
a private security force operating under a U.N. mandate – much like the various contractors (some armed) that the United Nations has hired in the past to clean up after wars. In practice, the Patrol is a supranational paramilitary agency under Infinity’s control. The Patrol’s jurisdiction on Homeline is strictly limited to protecting Infinity premises – although they have close liaisons with both national police agencies and Interpol. Beyond Homeline, only its reach limits its influence, but it has limited powers on worlds that have large national presences. The Patrol is spread very thinly among the many timelines it polices. The Patrol is a large organization, with 10,000 field agents and 50,000 other employees. It is multinational in character. The paramilitary “I-Cops” primarily recruit former police and military personnel, while the Penetration Service attracts adventurers and scientists of all sorts (geologists, anthropologists, biologists, etc.). The one constant is that everyone must pass rigorous psychological and loyalty examinations intended to weed out fanatic nationalists, criminals, radicals, and anyone else likely to betray the organization. Most of the time, this works – although some Patrol members undoubtedly have divided loyalties or hidden agendas. A Patrol field agent might be an explorer, investigator, or soldier, but regardless of his job, he serves in one of the Patrol’s two main branches: Intervention Service: Popularly known as the “I-Cops,” Intervention is the security and espionage arm of the Patrol. Its primary responsibilities are enforcing Infinity regulations and countering Centrum penetrations. Intervention is organized into 10 divisions, including Justice, Security, Internal Affairs, and Special Operations. Penetration Service: The “Time Scouts” are responsible for surveying and opening new timelines. They also handle search-and-rescue operations for lost conveyors. One of their leastknown but most dangerous jobs is crosstime intelligence gathering. Penetration’s eight divisions include Contact, Echo Surveillance, Intelligence, and Search and Rescue. Infinity Patrol Missions The Patrol has many duties, including: • Enforcement: Inevitably, some Homeline governments, corporations, and individuals use timelines in unacceptable ways: exploiting the natives, wasting resources, importing mercenaries and equipment for military adventures, and so on. This happens constantly, despite the I-Cops’ best efforts. But the Patrol keeps trying to stop it. This is the job of the Justice division of Intervention, but Penetration Service agents often notice the problem first, when a “new” timeline turns out to have uninvited guests. If an unauthorized penetration is discovered, the I-Cops go into action immediately. The policy is to shut down the penetration instantly if The Secret seems likely to be breached . . . but otherwise, to infiltrate the penetration in order to roll up the entire gang – not just the foot soldiers. An experienced Time Tours guide or retired scout might be approached for such a mission. • Homeline Security: The Security division of Intervention is focused on monitoring and stopping crosstime infiltration of Homeline. It works closely with the Intelligence division of Penetration – and with the intelligence agencies of major world powers – to detect and neutralize threats. A major part of this job is keeping tabs on conveyors and projectors. • Outtime Security: A pillar of Infinity’s policy is that no timeline outside Homeline (and obviously Centrum) is to learn that crosstime travel even exists – let alone use it – except under close control. The Penetration Service works to discover which timelines are edging toward this technology (or any other means of dimensional travel), while the Intervention Service takes action to ensure that individuals and governments do not breach regulations, and punishes those that do. When necessary, Intervention uses extreme measures to keep The Secret (see p. 540). • Defense vs. Centrum: This includes counterespionage against Centrum spies, espionage to learn more about the enemy, and the most “romantic” job in the Patrol: defending echoes against sabotage. Penetration and Intervention work together at these tasks. Penetration engages in surveillance, espionage, and counterespionage, while Intervention handles active police work and special-ops missions to counter Centrum operations once detected. • Rescue: There are many reasons why crosstime travelers might fail to make it back on time, ranging from the trivial (conveyor blew a fuse) to the disastrous (eaten by dinosaurs, taken hostage by renegades, or burned as witches). It’s also possible that they interfered with history and caused a timeline shift (see p. 544). So when travelers fail to check in, the Patrol sends out a rescue mission. Who goes on the mission depends on who was lost – and where. On a “safe” timeline, the response might be two junior Penetration troubleshooters with a tool kit . . . but they’ll be armed, just in case. For dangerous timelines, it might be an armed conveyor full of I-Cops. In all cases, the Patrol’s top priority is to safeguard The Secret; therefore, retrieving or destroying a lost conveyor can be more important than getting missing travelers out alive! For this reason, the Patrol often isn’t called immediately if the missing party belongs to a group other than Infinity. Many crosstime corporations (such as Time Tours) have their own reaction forces. Other governments have their own security forces, too – some more competent than others. And in extreme cases, ISWAT (p. 536) might intercept the call and quietly take over the mission. A rescue mission is a good, and potentially violent, adventure. And if it takes place in an echo, there is also the danger of causing an inadvertent quantum shift . . . Penetration Missions New timelines are discovered mathematically, although a lot of trial and error is also involved. Initial entry into a new timeline is always made using a robot with an extensive chemical and biological sensor package. Many timelines get no further visits . . . they’re not suitable for human life. But when a timeline looks safe, a human has to go in.
The first scout’s job is to get in, look around, and determine whether the timeline is inhabited – and, if so, by whom or by what. If it proves to be uninhabited, Penetration classifies it for colonization or other use and turns it over to Infinity Development. But if the timeline is inhabited, it remains the property of Penetration, and the survey proceeds very carefully. The first scout isn’t expected to bring back anything more than an estimate of the tech level and a recorded sample of the language. Later teams try to learn a bit more on each visit. If the timeline is similar to a known parallel or historical period, experienced agents can be brought in quickly. Otherwise, exploration happens one careful step at a time. The higher the timeline’s technology, the more careful the explorers must be. Only very well penetrated timelines are opened up to organizations like Time Tours. Usually, these are on Q4 and Q5, where Centrum’s agents cannot reach. But certain Q6 echoes are also (carefully supervised) tour sites. Naming New Worlds: A newly located timeline receives a code number based on its parachronic coordinates. Researchers inevitably end up coining informal names during the penetration process. Eventually, one name sticks and becomes official. Penetration Adventures: An adventure or even a campaign could be built around the first penetrations of a new timeline – especially if it has high technology and is not a close parallel. One of the first steps is to grab a daily newspaper. Imagine the gradual penetration of, for instance, a world in which the Nazis won World War II . . . and it is now 1960. MIRACLE WORKERS Miracle Workers is the nonprofit, “do-gooder” side of Infinity. It works closely with various U.N. aid agencies. Despite being heavily financed by licensing profits from other parts of Infinity, as well as by outside donations, there is never enough time or money to help everywhere. And – to the great frustration of the staff – Miracle Workers is strictly forbidden to help out in the historical echoes, for fear of shifting the timeline. Miracle Workers is not for profit, but is not in the business of handing out free lunches, either. When it resettles disaster victims, for instance, it usually requires those resettled to pay their way – most often by working for other Infinity operations. Still, these contracts are always more than fair to those being helped. Miracle Workers supplies vaccines, antidotes, food crops, etc., in situations where these things would make a difference. The biggest challenge here is covering its tracks, except in those rare, usually depopulated timelines where Infinity simply moves in and takes over. PARACHRONIC LABORATORIES This is Infinity’s pure-research organization, dedicated to improving both parachronic technology and Homeline’s understanding of the science behind crosstime travel. Infinity might ask agents of any of its organizations to test prototype equipment from “Paralabs.” When a traveler survives a new and devastating conveyor accident, researchers from Paralabs are in the middle of the investigation . . . probably demanding that the victims do it all again, more slowly.
OUTSIDE ORGANIZATIONS
Many organizations, both government and private, have access to conveyors. All of these units are theoretically under Infinity’s control, open to I-Cop inspection at any time. But conveyors are often falsely reported “lost” and put to clandestine uses – or simply stolen by untrustworthy agents or employees. This is a constant headache for the Patrol. More than 30 non-Infinity organizations have their own projectors. Fortunately, these are easier to police, and every projector has its own fulltime Patrol monitoring team. THE UNITED NATIONS The United Nations theoretically oversees Infinity in its many forms, but its “control” is loose on Homeline, and looser yet in the alternate worlds, Infinity definitely keeps secrets from the U.N. However, the U.N. has nearly unfettered access to Infinity facilities for operations such as humanitarian relief missions to other worlds. Since U.N. members tend to protest interventions against their crosstime analogs, most crosstime U.N. interventions are either in very different parallels or intended to help the “local” U.N. survive and grow. At any given time, the U.N. may be actively intervening in two to four different timelines. GOVERNMENTS Several nations (notably China, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have significant “official” parachronic capabilities, with their own fleets of projectors and conveyors. In addition to engaging in mining, waste disposal, and research, these governments maintain “colony” worlds on permanent lease from Infinity. For Infinity, the biggest problem with governments is their incessant “deniable” secret operations, as they try to circumvent the limitations Infinity places on them. Conveyors can and are built secretly, and the major powers undoubtedly have clandestine parachronic capabilities intended for covert exploration, weapon testing, outtime exploitation, or even war. The I-Cops often run into highly trained agents who they know are from Homeline. Sometimes they can even prove it. Projectors can also be built secretly, but no one seems to have done so on Homeline yet – again, giving rise to speculation that Infinity has detection methods it isn’t revealing. So far, no projector built off of Homeline has worked.
RESEARCH FOUNDATIONS The infinite worlds are fertile ground for scientific research. Scientists can study totally unspoiled biomes . . . or worlds that have been utterly destroyed by dozens of different disasters. Infinity permits almost any kind of nondestructive research. It would probably allow a little scientific destructiveness, too, if an artfully written proposal were to make the gains seem great enough. Most research, by far, has been historical and social. The historical parallels offer answers to countless intriguing “what if” questions, and the echoes offer – or at least seem to offer – a window into Homeline’s own past! Many expeditions are mounted to such worlds, to observe and to learn. These are bound by strict rules: they must keep The Secret of parallel worlds hidden, and they cannot change the history of the echoes, lest they be “lost” to a timeline shift (see Timeline Shifts, p. 544). CROSSTIME BOUNTY HUNTERS “Richard Z. Horn. Under arrest for a billion-dollar computer fraud, he jumped bail, hijacked a Time Truckers, Inc. conveyor, and disappeared on Cornwallis. The I-Cops found the abandoned conveyor, but after spending a week searching, they gave up looking for Horn – said he was no threat. But there’s a $1,000,000 bounty on Horn, and a reward from Time Truckers as well. I was determined to collect both . . .” There are a lot of places for a fugitive to hide among the hundreds of known parallel worlds. The I-Cops go after anyone who is a threat to security or the stability of an echo, but they lack the manpower to chase down anyone who doesn’t pose a clear and present threat to Infinity’s hegemony. The crosstime divisions of agencies like the FBI handle some of these cases. Freelance bounty hunters pick up many of the others. Getting a crosstime bounty-hunting license from Infinity requires a careful background check and appropriate experience (being ex-Patrol helps; a good employment history with a reputable crosstime company like Time Tours is also a plus). Some bounty hunters work alone; others work for private agencies, the largest and most successful of which is Infinite Justice, based in Indiana. CORPORATIONS Crosstime exploitation can be highly profitable. Numerous businesses operate from Homeline. White Star Trading Founded by Paul Van Zandt, White Star is the original interworld trading company – and probably the largest. Van Zandt financed most of his original development by trading back and forth with a single world. Today, White Star has offices in hundreds of dimensions, always disguised as ordinary businesses. Some are small, handling a few hundred pounds of rare commodities a day; for example, a crate of new-release CDs from Holly, or a breeding pair of passenger pigeons. Others ship hundreds of tons of grain or ore daily, loading the cargo onto barges that go out of sight of land and then jump between worlds. White Star was formerly part of Infinity, but antitrust considerations (and competitors’ objections) led to its becoming legally and financially distinct. It still has a “cozy” relationship with Infinity, which makes many of its smaller competitors unhappy. Other Traders Many corporations of all sizes are getting rich through cross-world trading. Goods that are cheap on Homeline are often valuable elsewhere, and vice versa. As always, though, The Secret must be kept. When a new timeline is opened up, the traders’ agents are the first in, looking for new goods and new markets. Some are unscrupulous, dealing even in slaves and drugs; others are the best allies the Patrol has. White Star dominates the interworld trading scene, but there is so much business that there’s no need to hog it all. One of the largest corporations involved is Time Truckers, Inc., whose trained conveyor operators hire out to various businesses. Time Tours, Ltd. “If it’s Tuesday, this must be 1066.” Time Tours is by far the best known of the “independent” companies using parachronic technology. Its business is sending groups of tourists on exciting expeditions into parallel timelines. The goal is not always pure sightseeing: one popular trip is the Dinosaur Safari, the ultimate challenge for hunters looking for really big game. The Patrol runs an official “customs check” when each tour returns, but unless the outtime world is known to contain some specific danger, this is mostly a formality. Working for Time Tours can be challenging. Employees must organize, equip, and lead expeditions to many different timelines. The job includes keeping the tourists out of trouble . . . tourists who all too often can’t manage the clothing or the language, and who will walk right into the Charge of the Light Brigade to get a good snapshot for the folks back home. As a result, Time Tours reserves the right to do whatever is needed – up to and including aborting the trip with no refund – to prevent “cultural contamination,” or to correct it once it has occurred.
Time Tours has competitors, but they’re not different – just smaller and often shoddier. And some other companies offer vacations rather than tours. They emphasize luxury over excitement. Johnson’s Rome (p. 527) is the best known of these. Mining Companies Many huge operations exist solely to wrest mineral wealth from uninhabited timelines. Most mining leases granted by Infinity are for otherwiseworthless worlds, many of which are uninhabitable without artificial aid. But there’s a great deal of wealth to be had . . . and greedy miners have secretly raped several habitable timelines. Waste-Disposal Companies Radioactive waste, toxins, biohazards, and other noxious brews too foul to stay on an inhabited planet . . . don’t have to. Infinity only permits waste dumping on genuine hell worlds – worlds that really can’t get any worse – and requires disposal companies to take every precaution to ensure that wastes get to the projector site in complete safety.
Keeping the Secret Infinity and Centrum may be enemies, but there is one thing they agree on: the secret of parachronic technology must remain their monopoly. An “outtimer” who learns this secret – The Secret – must be hired, discredited, or made to vanish. It’s reasonable to expect highly trained Infinity personnel to keep the secret of parachronic travel; indeed, operatives likely to contact outtimers have prepared cover stories that fit local belief systems. If possible, anything that might reveal The Secret will be explained away as a mundane event – but if not, it’s better the locals think they saw witches, fairies, or UFOs than get any inkling that humans with advanced technology are traveling across dimensions. On the other hand, when a herd of tourists goes charging off into a parallel, there’s a strong likelihood that somebody will let something slip . . . Eraser When outtimers see visitors appear or disappear, or witness some use of Homeline technology, the preferred solution is to make them forget. “Eraser” is a sedative and amnestic drug used by both Infinity and Centrum. A recipient must make a HT-3 roll to avoid its effects. On a failure, he falls unconscious. On awakening, his short-term memories – everything in the last 5d+45 minutes – are gone. Eraser comes in pill, injection, and gas form. It appears to have no untoward side effects, even in massive overdoses. The Infinity Patrol issues it to I-Cops and to civilian security personnel or guides engaged in authorized crosstime operations. It is not for sale at any price; authorized users must account for every dose acquired and used. Still, it turns up on the black market at an average price of $500 per dose. LC2. Extreme Measures When someone has seen too much and Eraser won’t solve the problem, and he isn’t a good subject for recruitment, troubleshooters are called in to deal with the security leak. Measures can range from dirty tricks intended to discredit the subject or change his perceptions, to commando raids aimed at eliminating all the witnesses and destroying all hard evidence. But where Centrum might kill, Infinity prefers to make the witness vanish. He is kidnapped . . . and taken to Coventry. Coventry Coventry is a Quantum 3 alternate in which humanity didn’t develop. It has one important and useful peculiarity: unassisted conveyors can’t enter or leave it – and neither can world-jumpers. And nobody knows why. This means the only access to Coventry is by projectorassisted conveyor from Homeline. The I-Cops use Coventry to isolate people who Know Too Much: outtimers who stumbled onto a Homeline operation; Homeliners who broke regulations; scientists abducted from other timelines because the Patrol feared they were too close to developing parachronic technology; and even disgruntled ex-employees of Infinity! The population also includes some voluntary settlers, rescued from crosstime disasters. All sorts of adventures are possible on Coventry . . . including a rescue attempt from within Infinity, by employees who are morally opposed to the whole concept. The world itself is a pastoral TL4, with TL8 medicine. Ethical Problems It would not be unfair to conclude that Infinity and Centrum regard outtimers – as a group, if not as individuals – as something less than “real” people with human rights. Infinity’s PR department does its best to downplay this perception, but every time the I-Cops cart some outtimer off to Coventry, they send the message that Homeline is somehow “superior.” And every time a filmmaker creates a historical epic by recording the bloody deaths of thousands of people in an outtime war, he reinforces the idea that the residents of other timelines are puppets for Homeline’s entertainment.
THE VERY RICH A very few, very wealthy individuals own conveyors for hobby purposes. Most of these people are glorified tourists or collectors, but there is the occasional sybarite who enjoys playing power games in “backward” settings. Their conveyor crews are all Infinity employees – which theoretically prevents the most flagrant abuses.
CROSSTIME COLONIES Infinity has opened several beautiful but empty worlds for colonization. Some companies have leased such worlds and sublet them to pioneers. Several governments have sponsored colony worlds, too. Most such colonies are simply outlets for excess population, but some – five sponsored by the United States, three by the United Kingdom, and one each by France and Japan – are deliberate attempts to establish alternative societies. One, Uhuru, even declared its independence from the United States and made it stick. There are also “secret” bases and colonies, sponsored by governments, corporations, and other organizations with clandestine conveyors. Some are hidden away on known timelines; others are on worlds as yet unknown to Infinity. A few have special purposes (mining, trading, research, etc.), but many are just groups of people trying to get away from it all. Colonies vary from TL4 to fully modern. The Manor Worlds A few very wealthy lovers of nature – or privacy – live on the “manor” worlds, each of which is divided up into a few thousand private estates. If you’re wealthy enough to buy or lease a private conveyor, you can have your own private Hawaii, or Ozarks, or St. Tropez, or Jamaica . . . with an instant commute, by conveyor, to Homeline!
ADVERSARIES
Infinity is Homeline’s chief guardian against outtime threats. As far as most Homeliners know, the only such menace is the rival world-jumping culture of Centrum. Actually, there are many other dangers out there . . . but Infinity keeps them secret to avoid causing panic on Homeline. CENTRUM Centrum is the only known human timeline other than Homeline to independently develop parachronic technology. It is also Homeline’s fiercest enemy. Centran agents intrigue against the Infinity Patrol across the dimensions, and will settle for nothing less than total domination of the infinite worlds. Centrum is a world government descended from a united Anglo-French Empire. One of the last historical figures to exist in both worlds was Eleanor of Aquitaine, who either created or stabilized the Empire and ruled it for over 20 years. The Empire grew and expanded, dominating Europe before 1700, Africa and Asia before 1850. The New World was colonized in an orderly fashion; the Indian tribes were enslaved or destroyed. In 1902, the Empire collapsed in a worldwide civil war; the aristocracy had become decadent, and with nothing left to conquer, they turned on each other. Members of the technical and military class likely engineered the war. Educated, trusted, and trained to serve, they had grown contemptuous of their titled masters – and when they restored world government 50 years later, it was stamped in their image: a tightly-organized meritocracy called “the Centrum.” Centrum’s rulers value science, order, and power for its own sake. Children are constantly tested and retested, and all training and promotion is based on talent and achievement. Philosophically, the key difference between Centrum and Infinity is in their treatment of inhabited worlds. Centrum wishes to bring all worlds under its central control, creating a single transworld state whose boundaries span the dimensions. The Centran approach to conquest is to infiltrate a world, overthrow its government as inexpensively as possible, and take over – and then advance its technology and send its leading citizens to Centrum for education and indoctrination. After a probationary period, outtimers can eventually hope to become citizens of Centrum itself, although no world is currently judged “ready.” Centrum is a mid-TL8 society. Like Homeline, it developed parachronics a few decades ago. Language The native Centran language is a heavily accented dialect of English. Centrum wiped out all other languages on its own world two generations ago. Until recently, they did not even have any trained linguists . . . because they didn’t need them! All this puts Centrum at a great handicap in penetrating worlds or areas where the language is unlike English. They are currently experimenting with methods of teaching language quickly – but right now, any fluent speaker of, for instance, Japanese is certainly not a native Centran. Interworld This is the Centran equivalent to the Infinity Patrol. As an arm of a world government, Interworld is larger and more ruthless than the Patrol. It might even have a better grasp of parachronic science. Almost without exception, Interworld agents are fanatically loyal to Centrum. They are also quite likely to have bionic implants – Centrum itself is fabulously wealthy, and can equip individual agents well. They kill mercilessly if necessary, but they respect talent, and often try to recruit talented outtimers. They have normal human feelings of loyalty toward friends, desire to protect children, and so on. They are not monsters or machines. Crosstime Conflict Centrum is on Quantum 8, while Homeline is on Q5. Since it’s possible to jump one quantum easily and two with difficulty, Centrum’s territories “overlap” Homeline’s at Q6 (which Homeline can reach more easily) and Q7 (where Centrum has the advantage). One might think that would provide a natural border. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. For one thing, Centrum is aggressive. For another, Q6 appears to have more usable worlds than all the other quanta put together (nobody knows why).
Centrum seems to have had crosstime travel for longer than Homeline, but initially used it mainly to enter empty worlds for resources. Their mastery of parachronic mathematics is definitely better than Homeline’s. They can apparently detect whether a timeline is unstable, and plan an intervention to push it in the direction they want; see Timeline Shifts (p. 544). Homeline’s scientists have not yet figured out how to do that – or at least, Infinity isn’t admitting it. Homeline became aware of Centrum’s existence nine years ago, when an intruder was captured in one of Infinity’s most secret labs. He told a very strange story under truth serum! Infinity released that first agent with an offer of friendship. Centrum immediately accepted, with apologies for their earlier penetration of Infinity’s territory. But it quickly became obvious that their “friendship” was entirely treacherous; they didn’t have enough experience in true cooperation to fake it believably. Eight years ago, they “stole” four timelines from Q6! A year later, the “infinity war” was a reality. Apparently, Centrum does not have “historical echoes” of the sort Homeline does . . . or, if such echoes exist, they are in a quantum unreachable from Homeline. This deprives Infinity of a possible source of insight into Centran psychology. Interestingly, Centrum seems to be at the exact same “time,” measured by the stars, that Homeline is. Is this connected with the fact that it is the only known timeline, other than Homeline, that can support a parachronic projector? Nobody knows. CROSSTIME BANDITS In the past five years, Infinity has shut down a dozen criminal crosstime operations. There are almost certainly many more. The Men Who Would Be King: There is a steady stream of megalomaniacs who try to use advanced technology or historical knowledge to seize a position of power in another timeline. To discover them, the Patrol uses the same surveillance methods it uses to catch Centran agents. Indeed, it can be difficult to determine quickly whether infiltrators are Homeline adventurers or Centran operatives! Time Raiders: Criminals who are just in it for the money – whether they’re after crown jewels, the Mona Lisa, or a nuclear warhead – are harder to catch. The most subtle raiders strike an echo and grab the loot just before it was lost “in history,” in an effort to avoid triggering timeline shifts that would bring the Patrol down on them. “Theft to order” for wealthy private collectors is where the steady money is . . . but everything from intellectual property theft to arms smuggling can be lucrative. Illegal Immigration and Crosstime Slavery: This is a growing problem. Need cheap labor? Find a suitable dimension, hire a conveyor-load of would-be illegal immigrants, and take them crosstime instead of cross-border. If they go to the authorities, they’ll be sent to Coventry, so they’ll accept cheap wages in exchange for the promise of earning enough to buy false citizenship papers . . . Criminal organizations import everyone from prostitutes to soldiers to nuclear physicists. And sometimes blackmail isn’t needed: “rescue” a platoon of Nazi soldiers from an echo’s Stalingrad and they may be eager to serve as your loyal mercenaries. There’s also a scary black market in famous movie stars, singers, and beauties. Only last month, agents of the Italian Gruppo di Intervento Speciale rescued a kidnapped Helen of Troy from a members-only brothel. Replacements: Duplicates (“dupes”) of many Homeline residents exist on close parallels like Earth-Beta. There have been cases where Homeliners have paid to have dead children, old lovers, or archenemies snatched from these worlds. In a few cases, the Homeline original was killed and replaced by a dupe. A typical scam: If Mr. Johnson is a millionaire businessman in Homeline but a homeless bum who lost everything in a market crash in Earth-Beta, the Mafia might grab Beta’s Johnson and offer him a deal to replace Homeline’s Johnson . . . as their comfortable puppet.
REALITY LIBERATION FORCE The RLF is a Homeline-based guerrilla organization that opposes the U.N. Interworld Council’s “undemocratic and unjust hegemony and exploitation of other timelines.” The RLF calls for an end to crosstime travel except for peaceful scientific purposes. The RLF has wide popular support. Several mainstream groups, notably People Against Crosstime Exploitation (PACE), serve as RLF front organizations. The RLF also has many sympathizers in political and military circles – although most resent the Council, which they feel has usurped their authority, more than they oppose crosstime travel. THE CABAL: MASTERS OF INFINITY A disturbing number of the magicians, psychics, parachronozoids (see p. 544), and supernatural entities that Infinity operatives encounter claim to have knowledge of a vast paranormal brotherhood known as “the Cabal.” To hear them tell it, the Cabal has lurked in the shadows for millennia, manipulating events across the infinite worlds through secret societies and occult conspiracies. Which Earth (or Earths!) the Cabal calls home is one of the most perplexing – and potentially unpleasant – conundrums Infinity faces. A particularly unsettling aspect of these rumors is their consistent claim that the Cabal has access to “higher dimensions of being,” somehow “above” the infinite worlds, known as the Astral Realm, the Iconic Realm, and the Realm of Pure Spirit. Cabal members are said to cross these realms and the infinite worlds in search of arcane knowledge. Perhaps most frightening of all, the Cabal is reputedly fractured. Renegade archmages and demon lords supposedly fight secret wars, with the infinite worlds as their pawns and battlefields. The losers become exiles, often bent on conquering parallel Earths beyond the Cabal’s reach, where they can amass power and plot vengeance . . . REICH-5 Reich-5, on Quantum 3, was the fifth “Nazi victory” parallel discovered by Infinity. It is presently in its year 2010, ruled by a brutally efficient world government dominated by Germany, Japan, and a Nazified United States. It is TL8 in most respects, but advanced in space technology and a twisted form of genetics – and possibly in psionic technology. Naturally, Infinity strictly prohibited travel to this world, and hid its existence in order to prevent it from acquiring The Secret. But after a decade of containment, the unthinkable happened: Nazi parapsychologists in the SS-controlled province of Burgundy discovered a psionic worldjumper (or captured such a visitor from another timeline – Infinity isn’t sure which) and gained expertise in harnessing and exploiting the power. By the time Infinity learned of this, the Nazis had approximately twodozen world-jumpers, of highly variable power and reliability (several had to use dangerous cocktails of drugs to unlock their powers), and were creating more through selective breeding, cloning, and bio-psionic technology. Worse, working in concert and using experimental psibernetic linkages, it seemed that some of these worldjumpers were able to transport loads of four or five times their own weight – sufficient to move squads of troops and even small armored vehicles. Reich-5 soon began its first crosstime invasion: an infiltration of Nostradamus, a post-apocalyptic world where prophecy shaped reality. That the locals foresaw the invaders’ coming did them little good; in fact, it reinforced the conquerors’ sense of destiny. And matters only got worse. Nostradamus proved to be at the junction of a “dimensional road” which the Nazi world-jumpers were able to detect and exploit. This road, which the Nazis call the “chronobahn,” seems to span at least half a dozen dimensions as it wavers in and out of existence . . . And the Nazis have begun to explore it. They can still only shift small loads at some risk, but they may be learning more. Reich-5 lags far behind Centrum and Homeline in parachronic theory – a weakness that is compounded by the fact that all of its researchers are highly eccentric “Aryan mystics” who seem intent on keeping secrets from the “materialists” in Berlin. Hence, Infinity has not yet activated contingency plans – for instance, to transport nuclear warheads to known Reich-5 military bases and government centers – and is instead focusing its efforts on destabilizing the regime. In any case, the “transdimensional SS” are already scattered across bases in an unknown number of dimensions. As Infinity is slowly realizing, Reich-5 has the potential to dominate all of Quantum 3 – and perhaps move beyond, especially if it finds allies.
PARACHRONOZOIDS
“Parachronozoids” are creatures with natural world-jumping abilities. There is a wide variety of them, native to different dimensions. Some resemble ordinary or talking animals, such as white rabbits, beautiful stags, or black horses. Others are mystical. And a few are terrible, semi-material horrors that man was not meant to know. All parachronozoids possess the Jumper (World) advantage (p. 64). Most have the Tunnel enhancement, allowing them to create interdimensional paths that can be followed. Of course, these paths close behind them after a time, with no guarantee that they will ever open again. This can have dire consequences for the unwary. For example, a hunter sees a beautiful white stag and gives chase, and as he follows, the world gradually fades away . . . and then the stag vanishes, leaving him stranded in another world! Many parachronozoids also have the Warp advantage (p. 97), giving them the ability to jump across space as well as the dimensions. Some parachronozoids seem drawn to those with latent or active psionic abilities (most often ESP or Teleportation). Others seek mana-rich areas, and there are rumors of ways to magically summon or lure them. Certainly, wizards have trapped and tamed such entities, using them as mounts or harnessing them to create world-jumping chariots. And some are predators and vampires, stalking prey from dimension to dimension . . .
World-Jumpers A “world-jumper” is anyone who possesses the Jumper (World) advantage (p. 64). This ability seems to be “psionic” . . . but nobody knows for sure. Infinity has several people with this ability on its payroll, and is always on the lookout for more. Only a few are native to Homeline. At least one of them claims to have visited alternate worlds before Van Zandt did . . . and kept it quiet, because he thought he was insane. Infinity’s world-jumpers are top couriers, special agents, and troubleshooters. Most observers believe Centrum has world-jumpers as well. In Infinite Worlds, Jumper (World) functions normally for jumps within the same quantum. Jumps between quanta are at -5 per quantum level of difference. Those who have this trait always know by “feel” what quantum they are on.
TIMELINE SHIFTS
Of the 379 timelines Infinity knows of in Quantum 6, 281 are “historical echoes”: worlds apparently identical to Homeline at earlier points in its history. No “future” echoes are known – although there are parallel worlds with higher technology or more advanced local dates. No echoes are known on any quantum except Q6. Why is Homeline “reflected” so many times in another quantum? Nobody knows. The echoes are irregularly spaced through history. There are few echoes before 3000 B.C. and none before 12,000 B.C. Some periods have several echoes; a few have none. In all of the echoes, time is flowing more slowly than on Homeline – but the difference is so slight (a maximum of one year of difference for every 250,000 years that pass) as to be almost unnoticeable. Nevertheless, this slight deviation would explain the differences, if the original “event” that created the echoes occurred some 3.5 billion years ago – perhaps during the earliest appearance of life on Earth. The echoes represent an incredible opportunity for research into history . . . but they also represent a significant hazard. Anyone visiting an echo is carefully cautioned against doing anything that might make a significant change in the timeline. This has nothing to do with ethics. It’s a question of safety. The balance that holds the echoes in Q6 is a fragile one. If something happens to change the future course of history in an echo, it may simply vanish! The first few times this happened, it was thought that the world had been destroyed. But as Infinity was on the verge of shutting down all travel to the echoes, one of the lost worlds was rediscovered . . . in Q5! Centrum seems to be able to instigate such shifts on purpose. Of the 24 echoes that have vanished from Q6 since Infinity discovered them, four are known to have moved “closer” to Homeline, going to Q5. Eleven are known to have moved to Q7, nearer to Centrum . . . and Centrum deliberately engineered at least six of these shifts. One bounced all the way to Q4, on the “other side” of Homeline. And eight of the missing timelines haven’t been found at all. Infinity regulations require that any visit to an echo be managed with extreme care – no casual or “tourist” trips are allowed. The I-Cops are
always alert for signs of Centrum’s intervention. But they can’t simply flood the echoes with agents – doing that would greatly increase the risk of instigating the very changes they want to avoid! Instead, they rely on strategically placed agents and regular patrols.
Mysteries Homeline’s understanding of the infinite worlds is hardly perfect. Situations that “break the rules” can be springboards for adventure! Two examples: Boojum: A perfectly ordinary timeline – not an echo and not on Q6 – vanishes. Four months later, it reappears. Six months later, it vanishes again. So . . . something can quantum-shift an ordinary timeline. Or maybe this timeline isn’t ordinary! Either way, the Homeliners on Boojum are in a panic, as are the administrators and researchers at Infinity. Centrum Beta: A newly penetrated Q7 timeline seems to be exactly like Homeline researchers think the world of Centrum was in the year 1895. Could it be an echo? Even an ordinary parallel would be interesting. Either way, why is it the only one they’ve ever found? And remember, Q7 is more accessible to Centrum than it is to Homeline; there are almost certainly Centran agents here!
CENTRAN INTERVENTION Centrum has intervened several times, in increasingly sophisticated ways, to try to move echoes “closer” to Q8. It is clear that Centrum has some method of predicting what sorts of changes will produce the desired effect. However, Centrum’s predictions are not infallible. In at least four timelines, massive Centran interventions seemed to have had no effect at all; these timelines appear to be “held in place” by something other than their similarity to Homeline (see Anchors, p. 526). If Centrum does manage to pull off an intervention, the GM should decide how long it takes to come into effect. A shift may take hours or days to occur – it is never instant – and the Centran agents must stay in place throughout, in order to protect their work! Even then, it might be possible to reverse the shift by counteracting the effects of the intervention. As a result, once Centrum manages to shift a Q6 timeline to Q7 or Q8, Interworld agents attempt to eradicate all Homeline personnel. Such an attack is more likely to be covert than overt. Examples of Centrum’s Intervention Successful interventions by Centrum include: The atomic destruction of London in the year 1902. The first and last time Centrum attempted any such gross attack. It became a political issue among Centran leadership; the parties responsible were removed from power. Such extreme intervention is not generally effective in any event – the results are too unpredictable. The execution of Princess Elizabeth in 1554, before she ascended the throne. Apparently, her sister Mary was influenced against her. The sinking of HMS Beagle with all hands in early 1833. Charles Darwin was among those lost. This timeline did not “vanish” until late 1837, though. The sabotage of Yuri Gagarin’s space capsule in 1960. This triggered a round of witch-hunts and accusations within the Russian space program that eventually spilled over into the Strategic Rocket Forces and dangerously weakened Khrushchev’s hold on power. This instability in the Kremlin may have contributed to the Cuba Incident of 1962, in the aftermath of which the U.S. and U.K. were able to enforce U.N. control over Soviet missile and space programs. This worldline migrated to Q8 shortly thereafter. Long-Term Intervention Infinity is concerned about the possibility of very long-term interventions. For instance, if a pivotal figure like Alexander the Great or Karl Marx were murdered as a child, no historical differences would show up for
years . . . but when they appeared, they would be huge. Possibly, Centrum can’t compute the effects of such interventions – or perhaps, if echoes exist in part because of human culture, only a large and sudden shift in popular attitudes can effect a change. It could be that if a key individual is removed prematurely, someone else will appear to take his role in history. Thus, removing Hitler well before his rise to prominence might only result in a similar dictator appearing, with little change in events. Parachronic intervention is still an art rather than a science. Intervention Adventures Trying to stop a Centran intervention on an echo makes an excellent adventure for a PC team of I-Cops. The GM can make the following assumptions: • The enemy agents are outnumbered and secretive. It is difficult and expensive to send anyone from Centrum to Quantum 6. • The enemy plan requires splitsecond timing . . . because, if it didn’t, they would have pulled it off already. Whatever the Centran method of computing an intervention, if the answer were always as simple as “Nuke London in 1902,” they’d succeed a lot more often. However, the enemy does have backup plans. • The Patrol gives the agents some general information about the enemy penetration. The means by which their superiors acquired this data is none of their business! They are simply told, for instance, “It’s 1453 on echo Sigma-6A. There’s evidence of Centrum penetration in Germany. If they’re working close to home, their target might be Gutenberg’s printing press . . . other teams are checking out other possibilities.” That’s one reason why counter-intervention teams are small: Homeline has to check out everything. Intervention in Reverse The GM can turn the whole thing around: Infinity has unraveled the secret of timeline intervention, discovered a string of Centran echoes in Quantum 7, and sent out strike teams to shift them toward Q5. Just work it all in reverse. The Homeline team has a specific assignment – something the computers predict will shift the timeline in a useful fashion if carried out successfully. The Centran opposition consists of lots of small teams . . . and if the Homeliners put one out of the way in too obvious a fashion, it tips off Interworld, who will reinforce the area very heavily.
Marooned! If a timeline shift takes the world you are on out of projector range (Q3-Q7 for Homeline; Q6-Q10 for Centrum), you’re stuck! You have two options: try to undo the shift, or find alternate means of transportation (enemy conveyor, friendly world-jumper, etc.). There are other ways to become stranded, including: Quantum Sargasso: A “quantum sargasso” is a dimension that a world-jumper or conveyor can enter but not leave. A projector can focus on it, but it can’t make pickup. The only way out is to find a nexus portal (p. 534) or use magic (e.g., Plane Shift, p. 248). No Mana: There are worlds where magic simply doesn’t work. A magical world-jumper, Plane Shift spell, etc. lets you enter these dimensions, but won’t let you leave!
EFFECTS OF TAMPERING WITH ECHOES It takes a significant change to cause a whole timeline to “move” to a different quantum level. A “significant” change is up to the GM, because nobody knows what kind of change is really significant. The mere presence of a group of strangers doesn’t seem to make much difference. But there’s always the chance of hitting a key moment in history: the visitor to reflected 1938 Washington gets the last seat on a train, so a senator is late to a meeting with the President, so a key military appropriation fails . . . so when World War II comes along, the United States loses. In general, if a change seems like it can lead to a distinct “what if” variation in history, it’s significant. However, a shift need not be permanent. One timeline was shifted to Q7 by Centrum aid to Benedict Arnold in 1780, turning the Revolutionary War in England’s favor. An intrepid team of I-Cops in the cut-off world sabotaged the British fleet off Boston, turning the war around again . . . and the timeline returned to Q6! It appears that history is sufficiently “elastic” to absorb a deviation – if it can be exactly counterbalanced before too much time has passed. For game purposes, assume that very minor changes do not create a shift – or, at least, not immediately. If outtimers do something that the GM thinks may “change history,” he can allow a shift to happen in minutes or days. A shift is usually only one quantum, but can possibly be more. Choose the direction of a shift randomly, unless it was caused by agents in accordance with a specific plan designed around a correct understanding of how parachronics interact with history. LOCATING A SHIFTED TIMELINE Only Infinity and Centrum possess the sophisticated instruments and supercomputers needed to locate a lost timeline quickly. Such a search requires a full week of work and a successful Physics (Parachronic) roll. This roll is at +3 if the timeline is in the researchers’ “home” quantum, at +1 if it’s in an adjacent quantum, and at no modifier if it’s two quanta away. If it’s three or more quanta away, it can’t be found! With lesser equipment, the search takes weeks to years (GM’s option) – possibly at a large penalty.
This is the end of the file.