I want to tell you a tale, who I am exactly does not matter and will perhaps only cause confusion and detract away from the tale itself. So if you are the sort of person who needs to know whom the tale-telling is by, then I'm afraid I must disappoint.
However if you are happy to hear a tale told by a disembodied voice, then sit back and prepare yourself for this very strange story.
There are seventy five connected planets, in fifty solar systems, situated in twelve different galaxies. These are now known as the Connected Federation of Planets, sometimes referred to as the Confined Federation.
These planets are connected by a series of interlocking, maximally extended, exotically charged wormholes. More simply referred to as the time tunnels. Originally the time tunnels facilitated near instantaneous travel between the connected planets.
It is thought that somewhere along the line the time tunnels malfunctioned and all planets have been shifted from their proper temporal axis. So that now anyone using the tunnels is cast either forwards or backwards along their subjective timeline.
Colin Gelfenrick originally lived on 24th century earth. However the year from Colin’s current point of view is circa 2850. This is because Colin left earth one day to take an adventure holiday on the planet Snadus-MU3. However, after arriving on Snadus he discovered that the planet had jumped forwards in time by several centuries.
When Colin attempted to travel back to Earth he found that his planet had been cast back around 500 years to the mid twentieth century. With no desire to live in what Colin considers medieval times he returned to Snadus-MU3.
Snadus-MU3 resides in a twelve planet binary star system in the Upper Spiral of the Mayoon Galaxy proper. The tunnel is thought to have originally connected Snadus-MU3 with its neighbouring planet Kauria, situated around thirty light minutes away.
However after the malfunction the tunnel now leads back to an earlier version of Snadus-MU3.
It is not known how much earlier the secondary Snadus-MU3 is set than the original, but it’s thought to be just a matter of weeks. Thus travel to the secondary planet from Snadus-MU3 is strictly prohibited.
It is also prohibited to visit Snadus-MU3 if you have been on the secondary copy at anytime within a system standard year. It is believed that the risk of unbalancing the time line is far too great. Or worse still you could go back in time and gain some kind of advantage over an adversary, which of course would not do at all.
It has generally been accepted that the time tunnels malfunction was the result of a war, although no one knows what the war was about or indeed if it’s over yet or still raging on. To add to this no one really knows if the malfunctioning time tunnels are a product of the war, or in fact a tactic within it.
This is largely because no one knows who the war is between or what it is about. To top all the confusion off, no one is really sure who put the time tunnels there in the first place. The only reason that anyone knows that there is anything wrong at all is mainly because of people in transit at the time of the malfunction.
Travellers like Colin were aware something was wrong because when they got to their desired destinations they were in the wrong time. This was made obvious by either the presence of hitherto unseen exotic technology. Or the lack thereof of specific advancements. When travellers like Colin tried to return to their original locations they were still in the wrong time but from a different standpoint.
For instance when Colin left Earth it was the year 2387 or 390 AD (After Diana) depending on if you were religious or not. If we give the planet of Snadus-MU3 the same date and chronological ordering as Earth (which of course it does not have) then when Colin arrived on Snadus-MU3 it was by all accounts approximately the year 2850 almost five hundred years in advance of the date it should have been. However when Colin attempted to travel back home he found that the date on Earth was around 1955.
Thus the planets within the Confined Federation are split into three main types, the first two being; the future planets and the past planets.
Inhabitants of the future planets are in a state of confusion as they only have the travellers' word that they are not residing in the time they should be.
As far as future inhabitants are concerned nothing is wrong and it is the travellers who have jumped forwards into the wrong time, not they who have come backwards.
The third class of planet is the before planets, however we shall deal with this in planet classification.
If you are an inhabitants of a past planets unless you have spoken to a future traveller, then from your perspective, the only thing that seems to be wrong, is that the time tunnels are broken.
This is because unless one is travelling in a space ship that was designed after the invention of the time tunnels but before the malfunction then your ship won’t be able to travel through the time tunnel.
So whilst it’s possible - with the right technology of course - to travel back to a past planet from any one of the seventy five connected planets. If someone from a past planet were to fly in a space ship towards say Snadus-MU3 their ship would not pass through the time tunnel.
Even stranger is the fact that if you’re a future traveller you can’t travel between the connected planets without passing through the time tunnels.
Nobody remembers if this was always the case, but the fact remains that it is impossible to travel interstellar distances without the time tunnels. Unless you come from a past planet and use past technology in which case the vast distance you are travelling will stop you getting to your destination anyway.
As a result of the time wars the future dwellers and future travellers are in a constant state of paranoia and confusion. Most travellers spend most of their time trying to work out if they are in the future or the past, and the reason for the time wars, and whether anything can be done about their situation.
Title image: Mohammed Jabber on Unsplash