My Character’s World.

I discovered, as Tolkien did, that you just can’t have characters simply exist in isolation. They have to have a world and a rationale for existing. So what world could my characters exist in if it was possible for them to be standing in the shoes of Gen. George S. Patton in one game and then Julius Caesar the next? How could a character be the commander of a starship in one game and then be an Indian chief in a war canoe in the next?

My answer was: in the world of the Space Time Mercenary Services. And so my world-building begins.

In the far, far distant future, mankind will have finally arrived at a practical technology for traveling in space and time. It will be prohibitively expensive because of the energy involved, but it will exist. And it will be discovered that the “many worlds” interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (see number 2) is the correct one because it will be found that you can go back in time and kill your grandfather without disappearing. Travel to the past will be found to be travel to a different “worldline” of the past. There is a past in which somebody else discovered America. There is a past in which George Washington was hanged for treason by the British Empire, and a past in which Germany won WW I., as well as a past in which Germany won both WW I and WW II. The time travelers of the future will discover that when they visit these pasts, their act of visiting will cause a new past to come into being. A new worldline.The possibilities will be endless.

But it will still be almost prohibitively expensive. The invention that allows this travel though space and time will be a large contraption that uses unheard of amounts of energy to do its work. It will come to be called an “Ephermis machine.” This term will turn out to be a common misspelling of the ancient word “ephemeris” (a table of numbers used to calculate the positions of astronomical bodies during the early age of astronomy and astrology). An ephermis is an alternate history that is reachable by the ephermis machine based on the coordinate string given it (i.e. []Ephermis/Worldline/etc, etc etc) "Ephermis" is the singular, "ephermi," the plural. The repeated refrain of this invention's discovery will be “the ephermi, ad infinitum!”

Later it will be found that some ephermi, if contaminated enough by anachronistic weapons (Sherman tanks being used in the American Revolution), will start to dematerialize and go out of existence. Hence the services are often forced to use period weaponry. And sometimes the source of a contamination cannot be located, or an enemy will have engineered it in some subtle way. This will cause an ephermis to become ephemeral, and this will be another reason for the way "ephermis" comes to be spelled. From time to time,the services will have to call an emergency ephermis evacuation. (In real life this usually means the save file of the game I'm playing has become corrupted, or my hard drive has taken a hit in the middle of a game, or I've just gotten tried of a game in the middle of it.)

A Time for Everything

“In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army.” (2 Samuel 11:1) NIV.

The Ephermis Machine will be almost prohibitively expensive to use. But only until the space and time travelers of the future discover what the one commodity is that the all societies in the space-time continuum place the highest value on: expertise in war. The Space-Time travelers of the future will find that they can afford to travel the ephermi if they hire themselves out as mercenaries to the various militaries they find there. “After all,” they will say, “our little visits will just create new ephermi instead of changing existing ones.” This will be the charter for exploration of space and time by the sword. (Most of the mercenaries will not realize until it is too late that the one thing they will change for well or ill is their souls.)

So as the aeons roll on, and the ephermi travelers with them, various “Space Time Mercenary Services” will come into being. Having a large organization makes it easier to build and operate an Ephermis machine. And as the mercenaries do battle through out the Space Time continuum, they will be fighting under various flags and for various philosophies and ideologies. Over the ephermi, these battles of ideas will have been fought and re-fought so often, and under so many different names that in the minds of the mercenaries, they will have been worn down into highly abstract principals. Instead of Central Planning versus the Free Market, instead of Democracy versus Dictatorship, and instead of Secularity versus Religion, there will be: Center versus Circumference.

The Center organization, or CENTER or CENT for short, is for the Space Time Mercenaries who believe that centralization and concentration of power, and top down management, are the only way things should be done. In the American Revolution, they will take the side of the British Empire. In WW I, they will take the side of the Central Powers. In WW II, they will side with the Germans and the Japanese. They tend to support dictatorships, and they believe that ends justify means. They wear red uniforms with a rectangular patch that has an arrow from each corner pointing to and meeting at the center of the patch. They salute by bringing the closed fist of their right hand over their heart and saying “at the CENTER!” or “CENT!” Their Pentagon is called The Pinnacle.

The Circumference organization, or CIRCUMFERENCE, or “CIRC,” is for the Space Time Mercenaries who believe that decentralization and bottom up methods are the best way of life. CIRC would side with the Greeks against the Persians at Thermopylae, the revolutionaries in the American Revolution, the Allies in WW I and II. CIRC tends to support democracies and work against dictatorships. They wear green uniforms that have a circular patch with a prominent line around the circumference of the circle. They salute by touching the tip of their right hand fingers to their left shoulder while raising their right elbow to a 45 degree angle to their bodies. This makes a rough angular circle, and they say “on the circumference!” or “Circ!” Their Pentagon is called The Cellar.

But ephermi are often not that simple for CIRC or CENT. Sometimes each organization has to “hold its nose,” when taking a contract. CIRC would hold its nose while taking a contract with the US federal government during the American Civil War, because it would be fighting for a federal government against a confederacy which is a less consolidated form of government. But CIRC would take the contract because CENT would hold its nose while taking a contract with the Confederacy. CENT would hold its nose because it was supporting a rebel government, and a less consolidated form of government, against a more consolidated form of existing government. But CENT would take the contract because it would consider slavery to be a consolidation of power based on race, which would be why CIRC would get involved on the other side. Likewise, in those ephermi in which the Roman Empire has split into the western Latin empire and the eastern Greek Byzantine empire, CIRC will hold its nose taking the Latin’s contract against the Byzantines because the Latin empire was once a Republic, whereas the Byzantines had know only the autocratic emperors, and thereby would be attracted to CENT.

And there is yet another complication. CIRC has been more stringent in its operations than CENT. So it sometimes dismisses mercenaries from its ranks for actions inconsistent with its creed. This created a pool of disgruntled ex-CIRC mercs who went on to form their own organization, SPHERE. SPHERE believes that CIRC “could stand to be a little more three dimensional.” SPHERE has no set principles and is entirely undiscriminating in the contracts it accepts. It often takes contracts that both CIRC and CENT will not take, and it will often take on third party contracts where there are three combatants and CIRC and CENT are contracted to the other two. This is how SPHERE got started. SPHERE mercenaries are considered to be the “patron saints of lost causes.” They will do things like taking the Native American’s side against the US Army during the Indian Wars, and taking on the side of the Western Roman Empire as it falls. But they are not really being saints because they charge more for lost causes. With no small controversy, SPHERE has also been known to take the side of aliens against humanity in far future ephermi. They are truly hated by both CIRC and CENT for this. But their only reply is “Hey, its cash!”

SPHERE’s uniforms are black with a grey trim and their patch is a white rectangle with a raised grey ball in the center (the “three-dimensional circle”). They salute by holding up their right fist and saying “SPHERE!” Their Pentagon is called “The Core.”

Next Post: the details of my character sheets.