A bit of history:
Let us start with the keys to everything. When are we? 2751 AD or 220 years after EMP. Where are we? Original Earth. Now for the longer question, how? In 2549, Humans of original Earth were an interstellar lot that frequently hopped on to transports of the Alliance and wandered off to explore the Universe. The Alliance is an interplanetary equivalent of the United Nations spanning numerous galaxies. Earth had been a hubport within the Alliance for over a hundred years by that time. There were many who swore never to leave their home planet let alone their home state or country, but there were also had those who couldn’t wait to leave in order to explore the vast surroundings.
On about late September 2549, Mother Nature decided to make her issues known to humanity in a very interesting way. At first it was the resurrection of dormant volcanos across the entire planet, Pompeii to Argentina, blanketing the planet in soot and shadows.
With help from some of the greatest minds in the Alliance, Earth was able to scrub her air clean and keep the crops growing to feed the population. However, Mother Nature didn’t take kindly to the quick clean up. She then generated two massive storms, within six months of that clean up putting us in May 2550, so large that the weather control systems could not shut them down: Typhoon Raphael and Hurricane Azazal.
Raphael decimated and sunk a huge chunk of what was called Mexico and California before angling across into China, Mongolia, and sustaining itself amazingly to dump record flooding into Russia. China had large swaths that sank under the storms power. Mongolia was scoured and flattened.
Azazal rewrote the meaning of Hurricane. Forming off the tip of Africa, proceeding to wipe out the ear of Africa, before shifting into the North Atlantic where it split and built up in size.
Azazal A aimed straight for Bermuda, destroying everything north of West Virginia, up through Ohio and into Onterio and Quebec Canada. It flooded the inland sea that had been buried under the great lakes which sank a huge section of Canada, widened the Mississippi River until is joined Lake Michigan. It also impacted Hudson Bay to the point where a large section of Greenland was flooded out including several ‘last resort’ facilities.
Azazal B decided to hook shot its way straight up Portugal and Spain flooding and destroying so much in its path. The sheer amount of rain flooded the mini seas that large sections of coastal lands sank from Italy, Greece but also up to England and Norway. The winds from B kept pummeling its way through Belarus and Ukraine for days as it kept regenerating the rains.
The loss of life, livestock, materials for production, and no way to plant sufficient crops with the flooding that had occurred, many who had originally chosen to stay on Earth had either perished under her fury or at that point had given up, opting to find another home in the skies. The diehards that stayed faced shortages of every imaginable source. The communities that built after that were referred to as “Ridgebacks”. These Ridgeback communities were tightly woven, very leery of outsiders, very independent from any kind of government or Alliance assistance. Depending on the region, their government had been obliterated along with the cities and land. These communities lifted themselves up, salvaged what they could, healed or rescued what they could, and started over.
Winter hit hard in 2550 and in welcoming 2551. That’s when Mother Nature gave her final middle finger salute to her occupants. February 19, 2551 at 18:00 UTC Central Standard Time, good ol’ Mother Nature produced a massive EMP that wiped out every motor, watch, mechanical bit…shielded or not… leaving the Earth and its surrounding satellites in complete darkness for the first time in several Millenia. This generated a field around the Earth that dampened or killed electricity. Many Ridgeback communities suffered devastating losses due to the sudden lack of solar cells or gas-powered generators to keep their compounds heated in subzero temperatures. But many more had already had contingencies for wood or junk burning stoves, or had built using heat retaining materials, or many more had baffled window/wall systems that used the daylight to heat up sources during the day to sustain overnight.
Great engineering minds were pulled from across the Alliance again, reviewing the data, trying to get more information, but between the dead zone for power around the planet and the earthquakes that raged along every fault line on the planet, no one was getting any information immediately. When the major quakes ended in July 2551, the Alliance scientists were finally able to utilize Solar sail ships to make planet wide surveys. The Arabian and Indian plates had sunk, taking the land with it.
The Eurasian plate had split into three new sections. Saskylakh Russia was now the North Eastern tip of Asia plate that travelled down to Krasnoyarsk before cutting into Lanshou China before stopping at Hanoi. Tripura in Bangladesh was the southern and western border the Eurasian plate that wandered up to Tomsk Russia for its Western border to Tambei Russia for its North Western border cutting over to Shoyna Russia before cutting down to Volgograd before making a jagged line along where the Arabian and Indian plates had been.
The third plate was renamed Euro Plate. What remained of Europe resided on the new plate. That wasn’t the only plate to fracture, however. From where the heel of the Arabian plate had been, it caused a jagged break through the African plate that sheared off the tail starting at Kenya heading down through Angola.
The South American plate also sheared starting at Natal Brazil and stopping at Hauasco Chile. Losing a quarter of its land mass to the newly formed sea. It was also noted that the Earth was no longer rotating as quickly as it had and that the core would stop turning within the space of a thousand years. The planet was in the throes of death unless the core could be kept from cooling and slowing.
The day the EMP happened was also the day that Keeper was created. It was the day when the threads of time were splintered around Earth and a family of travelers were caught in a bubble of time that changed their lives in a different way for ever. The De Lyons had been a small family of Archeologist and Scientists who had been on a family vacation in some rather unspectacular caves in Iowa, USA. But it just happened to have the right mixture of crystals and metals, that the moment the EMP blast hit, it generated the most miraculous time bubble. The De Lyon family will share their story shortly.
Kronologix is a protective time agency that resides only on Original Earth because it is the only location that the fractures happen. Founded by the De Lyons, Kronologix is one of the main employers left on planet. Resurrecting steam powered technologies, modifying Nikola Tesla principles to what energy sources still remained now that Earth’s own fields were failing. Kronologix also worked with the Alliance in building the ‘Core Engine’. Utilizing several other races technology, Kronologix identified the needs to build within Challenger Deep in the Marianas trench. They ‘doorway’ was built layering numerous different high tensile, non-native metals into a two-acre wide opening to the ocean floor. From there massive equipment was brought down in sections to dig, drill, and build the massive network of sub-mantle reheating stations with inlets that sunk into the outer core recirculating the magma and fluids to keep the flow and rotation moving as much as possible. Work in the reheating stations and the Core Engine, in general, is hot and dangerous. Mostly manned by prisoners from a variety of Alliance races due to the short life expectancy.
The other group that was created by Kronologix was the Kronokeepers. Kronokeepers were essentially sheriffs or marshals to protect the timelines and fractures. It was determined very quickly that anything with a power source could not come make the time jump past the EMP point in history. It hadn’t stopped people from trying as they found time cracks that led back in time. Kronokeepers originally just blocked off these cracks in time. Arturo De Lyons figured out how to close them. But every step forward made to resolve these issues, there were thieves who found ways to open new portals or fractures. Out of necessity, the Kronokeepers became more of a special intelligence force in time.
To Be Continued…
Kronologix Universe 