Timeline of the Ed stories

Timeline of the Ed stories.

First timeline

This is the primary timeline with no changes in it due to time travel.

In this timeline, the Eridanians defeat Humanity.

Date Event
June 22, 1982 Eduardo Frank MacPherson is born.
1997 At a top secret facility under Mount Kerrig in Nevada, scientists begin working on a practical time machine.
late 1990s Earth radio signals become too loud for the inhabitants of Epsilon Eridani One to bear. They begin plans to wipe out Humanity and thus silence their noisy neighbouring planet.
February 11, 2001 The first wave of Eridanian drones arrives to attack Earth. They are impervious to all conventional weapons; Humanity is absolutely unprepared. The first wave is eventually driven off, but at huge cost.
2001-2035 The Eridanian War. Eridanian drones deliver electromagnetic pulses and neutron bombs worldwide. The only surviving Humans and technology are buried underneath enormous mountains - such as the Kerrig Facility and its scientists, among them Ed MacPherson.
2036

With a half-complete time machine still in their posession, Ed and others begin a project to go back in time and prevent the Eridanian War ever occurring. They scavenge as much information as possible from downed Eridanian drones and compress it into a data package to be sent back to a specially chosen individual, namely the young Ed MacPherson.

They provide Ed with information about weapons, space technology, nanotech, artificial intelligence, time travel, the history of the war, and so on. Fully understanding the Eridanians' motivations, they know the only way to save Humanity is to destroy the Eridanians.

September 16, 2041 Ed writes his message to his past self.
September-October, 2041 Many attempts are made to send the information package back in time to Ed MacPherson at the instant of his birth. Several of them are successful, but the Kerrig scientists have misunderstood time travel. They are stuck in this timeline for good. They have to see the aftermath through to the end.

Second timeline

This is the main timeline of the Ed stories. It diverges from the above timeline at the instant of Ed's birth when the information package arrives in his brain from 2041.

In this timeline, Ed successfully defends the Earth from the Eridanians, but accidentally erases the Andromeda galaxy, then the Eridanians trigger an energy virus.

Date Event
June 22, 1982

Eduardo Frank MacPherson is born. At the instant of his birth, an electroencephalographic message from the future arrive in his brain, imprinting it with information which gradually begin to surface over the course of his life.

1997 At a top secret facility under Mount Kerrig in Nevada, scientists begin working on a practical time machine.
late 1990s

Earth radio signals become too loud for the inhabitants of Epsilon Eridani One to bear. They begin plans to wipe out Humanity and thus silence their noisy neighbouring planet.

Meanwhile, Ed shows signs of being a scientific prodigy, carrying out incredible projects in his spare time all the way through his childhood.

October 2000 Ed and Sam meet in their first year of university. Ed reveals his insane scientific exploits to Sam, but nobody else. Ed persuades Sam to create a time travel password, having already created one himself.
October 2000 Ed and Sam's memorable first adventure. In the university's Theoretical Physics Centre, an A.I. (which will later call itself Tyro) spawns from a propositional logic calculator program of Ed's. They trap it in a locked part of a Cray supercomputer on the university network.
November 2000

Ed hijacks control of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, just out of curiosity. Using it, he finds a second layer of reality below this one and accidentally injects a single "command" into it before the particle accelerator almost self-destructs in response to the layer shutting him out again. Ed concludes that the layer must have been a featureless void.

His command actually has the effect of erasing the Andromeda galaxy, along with nearly half a quadrillion lives. The half-million survivors of the galaxy's deletion are those who were in the process of tunneling between locations at the instant of the deletion event. They manage to gather together again in the aftermath and divide into two groups; those who will find a new home to settle in, and those who, for whatever reason, want to find the individual responsible. The latter group gathers its ships together to form a Raft they call the Mantissa and, led by a machine intelligence called Krah, set off in search of Ed.

late November 2000 Some Haitians sell Ed some impure palladium.
December 2000 Thanks to the impure palladium, Ed and Sam's latest adventure results in a near-death experience for them both. They have an argument about this.
January 1, 2001 Ed resolves to take more care over his experiments so as to never again endanger human life.
February 11, 2001 Ed and Sam finish building a Directed ElectroMagnetic Pulse (DEMP) weapon. Later that same day, the first wave of Eridanian drones arrives to attack Earth. They are impervious to all conventional weapons, but prove vulnerable to DEMPs, which shut down their guiding AIs and cause them to self-destruct. DEMPs are swiftly employed to drive away the alien drones, but no technology is gleaned from the sparse wreckage they leave behind, nor is the true identity or origin of the aliens.
March 9, 2001 Events of It, Robot (part 1) and It, Robot (part 1.5). Ed and Sam build a mech, armed with (among other things) a railgun loaned from the university's Magnetic Physics department. Later that day (again) the Eridanian drones come back, this time immune to DEMPs too. Ed remotely pilots the mech against the Eridanians and nearly wins, but is eventually blown up. However, all of this is caught, very publicly, on television. Mechwarrior players around the globe offer to pilot, and the DoD buys the designs for the mech.
March 10-16, 2001 Mechs are rushed into mass-production and the world's massed gamers spend the next week seeing off the aliens for a second time. During the conflict, the Space Defence Coalition is set up. Once the aliens are defeated the SDC emplaces two hundred mechs and a rotating staff of on-call pilots around the world, ready to defend against further attacks. Also around this time, the CIA begins observing Ed.
April 19, 2001 Ed begins working on the ultimate light switch, connected via equipment in the university's Theoretical Physics Centre to the core of the Sun itself.
April 26, 2001 Events of The annoying orange orb outside my window each morning. Thanks to Ed's ultimate light switch, the world is momentarily plunged into darkness as the Sun is switched off for five seconds. The tradition of a post-adventure cup of tea is also instituted. Only a few intelligence agencies eventually succeed in linking this to Ed.
May 2001 Ed creates a microscopic side-universe in which he can store huge amounts of external equipment. He no longer needs to hijack other people's machinery for his experiments.
June 1, 2001 Using the microscopic side-universe, Ed engineers Blues, a computer with specifications twenty years ahead of its time.
June 13, 2001 Events of Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out. Using Blues and a worm, Ed momentarily "logs out" roughly ten million people.
October 2001 Start of the second year at university for Ed and Sam.
early November 2001 The sentient portion of the Cray in the Theoretical Physics Centre escapes, only to become trapped in the Amiga 500 that it shares a network with.
November 12, 2001 Ed and Sam notice that the Amiga 500, resembling as it does an inferior chatterbot, has become sentient.
November 19, 2001 Events of An admin password for the universe. Ed discovers that the "featureless void" of the second layer of reality he discovered in November 2000 is in fact the universe's configuration file of sorts. He dubs it the Root Layer and plugs in his old experimental results from when he accessed it in November 2000. He discovers that the "command" he performed actually deleted the entire Andromeda galaxy.
December 2001 Ed discovers how to clone people and enters his findings into his computer.
January 2002 Various (again, unmanned) Eridanian bombing runs begin. Ed is among the volunteers in the Space Defence Coalition who are tasked with defending the Earth, something they succeed in on a daily basis.
early June 2002 Events of It, Robot (part 2). On Ed's watch, the aliens get to within a minute of ground zero: the closest they've ever got. Around this time the Eridanians begin to concede that they will never defeat Humanity and begin to work on an alternate plan - an energy virus which will enclose their solar system in a protective shield against Earth's radio output.
June 24, 2002 The last recorded Eridanian bombing run occurs (and fails, as always).
June 25, 2002 The Eridanians accidentally trigger the wrong kind of energy virus. This punches a hole through most of the universe's layers and proceeds to expand at the speed of light, converting everything in its path to absolute absence of space.
late June 2002 SDC analysts conclude that the aliens are mustering forces for a larger attack and remain on high alert.
July 2002 Ed begins building a spaceship, the Ed Rocks. One of the first tools he'll make in the process is a Universal Constructor.
October 1, 2002 Start of the third year at university for Ed and Sam.
early October 2002 Ed begins working on wormhole technology as part of the tunnel drive for his spaceship. Then he becomes distracted by the possibilities of trapdoor wormholes, and enters into his (CIA-bugged) computer something sufficiently verbose on temporal wormhole technology that the Kerrig scientists can make a time machine out of it.
October 13, 2002 Events of The best thing since sliced bread. Ed creates a one-way portal forward in time ten seconds.
late October 2002 Working on the obvious next step of a backward trapdoor wormhole, Ed draws up a sketch of a prototype time machine, but then tears it up and sets fire to the pieces.
November 2002 In the course of his research into his spaceship design, Ed discovers seventy-seven additional layers of the universe, and a grand unified theory based on these named Layer Theory.
December 3, 2002 At the Kerrig Facility in Nevada, scientists complete a working time machine.
around midnight Pacific Time (8am UTC), December 8, 2002 Events of Be Here Now begin. Ed and Sam appear inside the time machine at the Kerrig Facility underneath Mount Kerrig in Nevada, USA. They are captured, held, interrogated, and demand to see the other Ed and Sam.
9am UTC, December 10, 2002 Two CIA agents visit Ed and Sam in the UK, to bring them to the Kerrig Facility.
11am Pacific Time (7pm UTC), December 10, 2002 At the Kerrig Facility, Ed and Sam brief/are briefed by their alternate selves, followed by lunch.
late night Pacific Time, December 10, 2002 Ed and Sam are sent back in time to midnight on December 8. The other Ed and Sam resume their lives where they left off nearly three days ago. Events of Be Here Now conclude.
January 29, 2003 Events of Ed Rocks, The first frontier and Men like large amounts of kinetic energy. Ed and Sam take the Ed Rocks on its first test flight. They visit Jupiter but are unable to go to Epsilon Eridani, as it has been destroyed by the energy virus.
February 5, 2003 Events of Nine Years. Ed discovers the energy virus that was set off on June 25, 2002.
March 17, 2003 The Space Defence Coalition, advised by Ed of the energy virus situation, steps its alert level down to nominal.
March 17-22, 2003 Events of Do Not Fire From Target Continuum and That's your solution to everything. Having nowhere else to turn for help, Ed holds a five-day scientific conference at which he goes public, announcing Layer Theory, the existence of the energy virus, the identity of the aliens and Sam's proposed solution. Project Chrononet, as it will soon come to be named, officially begins.
April 2003 Mere weeks before his final exams, Ed drops out of university and goes to America, where he begins work at NASA on Project Chrononet. One of the first things to happen when he gets there is Tyro escaping his computer and causing enough trouble to require quarantining by the federal government.
June 2003 Sam graduates and goes to work in an office job in the city. He and Ed quickly grow increasingly distant and lose contact with one another.
9:06am UTC, July 2, 2008

After a search of nearly eight years, Krah announces she has located the origin of the command which deleted Andromeda. The Raft Mantissa jumps into the Sol system. At that instant, a faction of those on board launches a highly coordinated software attack on the governing systems of Krah's primary momentum cannon. They use it to select an asteroid near the Sun and launch it at one-tenth of lightspeed towards the most densely populated area of Earth - central India. It is due to hit at 10:32am UTC.

SDC long-range warning stations detect the asteroid instantly. Ed, still at his desk at NASA Florida despite it being five in the morning local time, is among those alerted, and immediately takes charge of the situation.

9:07am-9:15am UTC, July 2, 2008 Events of Your radical ideas. Ed phones Sam at work, who provides inspiration for a plan, which Ed explains to all present.
9:17am-9:27am UTC, July 2, 2008 Events of My other car is a giant robot. Sam is flown by a mech piloted by Marcus across the UK to his old student house.
9:29am-9:47am UTC, July 2, 2008 Events of Mechcourier. Sam retrieves the hoop wormhole from Ed's basement and is flown halfway to the rendezvous point.
9:47am-10:04am UTC, July 2, 2008 Events of Final Approach. The first wormhole is built and construction begins on the second.
10:04am-10:21am UTC, July 2, 2008 Events of Cosmic Shotgun. The second wormhole is completed. Construction on the third wormhole begins. The third wormhole is completed. The second wormhole is destroyed.
10:21am-10:32am UTC, July 2, 2008 Events of And The Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place. The third wormhole is destroyed. The asteroid apparently hits, but is intercepted at the very last instant by Krah after she regains control of her momentum cannon.
10:33am onwards, July 2, 2008 Events of this is the rest of the iceberg, Truth And Reconciliation and Famous First Words. Krah explains to Sam who she is and why she and her passengers have come to Earth. Ed is given a First-Law rider. Krah makes formal first contact between the Andromedans and Humanity.
Midnight, August 1, 2008 Events of Imperfect worlds begin. Thanks to the combined efforts of Ed and the Andromedans, Chrononet is completed. Planet Earth is wrenched ten years backwards in time.
December 22, 2012 The energy virus wavefront reaches the Sol system on this day, which also happens to be the day the Mayan calendar reaches zero and the day of the end of the world according to the I-Ching.
December 25, 2012 Ed planned in April 2001 to turn the Sun off momentarily again on this day.

Third timeline

This timeline diverges from the previous one at midnight on August 1, 1998, when Earth-plus-ten arrives from 2008.

In this timeline, Hotel Infinity uses a modified energy virus to shield the Eridanians from Earth's noisy radio waves, meaning the Eridanian War never happens. Also, Andromeda is never destroyed.

June 22, 1982

Eduardo Frank MacPherson is born. At the instant of his birth, an electroencephalographic message from the future arrive in his brain, imprinting it with information which gradually begin to surface over the course of his life.

late 1990s

Earth radio signals become too loud for the inhabitants of Epsilon Eridani One to bear. They begin plans to wipe out Humanity and thus silence their noisy neighbouring planet.

Meanwhile, Ed shows signs of being a scientific prodigy, carrying out incredible projects in his spare time all the way through his childhood.

Midnight, August 1, 1998

Events of the second half of Imperfect worlds. A new Earth appears in orbit around the existing one in this timeline. The new Earth is from the year 2008 and is henceforth named Earth-plus-ten; the existing one becomes Earth-minus-ten. Along with the new Earth is the Raft Mantissa and many Andromedan refugees. Krah quickly emplaces a First-Law rider in Ed-minus-ten, then departs with her passengers for Andromeda.

Ed-plus-ten and Sam-plus-ten leave for Epsilon Eridani.

morning of August 1, 1998 Events of The faintest idea. Ed and Sam locate the Eridanian homeworld. Meanwhile, Krah reaches Andromeda and relays her epic story. The XRV Hotel Infinity realises that Ed may be the cause of the first time-shift and heads to Epsilon Eridani to find Ed.
afternoon of August 1, 1998 Events of Hotel Infinity and Resolution. Ed, Sam and Hotel Infinity solve the mystery of the Eridanians, Ed's origins and the first time-shift to occur in this timeline.
night of August 1, 1998 Events of What doesn't take a million years takes a millionth of a second. Ed-plus-ten is killed by vengeful Andromedans immediately on showing himself when he returns to Earth.
mid-August, 1998 Ed's life is formally concluded by Sam. His funeral is surprisingly well-attended. Sam goes on to work for SDC Earth/Andromeda Liaison. Andromedan culture support vessels begin relief work, rapidly building the planet Earth into the kind of utopia Humanity always strove for.
2000 Sam quits working for the SDC.
2050 The end of Sam's story...

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Discussion (2)

2016-06-27 02:53:34 by Killako:

Free, Standing?

2018-03-24 15:19:21 by BlackPawn:

I like to think that "Free, Standing?" features Ed-minus-ten.

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The square root of minus one: