The One-Sheet

     Until 3:17 am GMT on 18 March 1998, Retrograde was a perfectly normal echo; the major differences seemed to be a couple of science fiction writers who were missing and replaced with others.  According to all reports, the first hint anyone had of the event later to be called the Change was a "flash" of white light (which even the blind could see, pointing to a neurological rather than strictly physical source) and a brief but intense pain.  In the wake of the Change, explosives no longer exploded, steam and heat engines failed to work, and electronics the world over burned out as their wires ceased to properly conduct.

     No one, including Infinity scientists, has any idea why it happened.

     The consensus among Homeline investigators and those few locals with the leisure and resources for inquiry on Retrograde is that the Change must have been artificially induced.  While it is technically possible that it was a random, natural revision of the laws of physics, it seems far too targeted--for example, a Stirling engine no longer produces work if you put heat in, but it does produce cold if you put work in.  And metals don't conduct electricity anymore, but neurons do.

     With the sudden demise of modern technology, civilization ground to a halt.  While there were some few areas that noticed the Change mostly because their hunting rifles no longer fired, over 95% of the population of the Earth died in a few months of famine, disease and riot.  Within a hundred or so miles of any major city, essentially no one survived.

     The limitations on technology, and the fact that most places are still recovering from the Dying Time that followed the Change, mean that the phrase "great power" has little meaning on Retrograde.  Most of what pass for great powers have strictly local reach, though a few have begun to contemplate sending exploratory missions to the rest of the world.

     After it lost contact with Retrograde, Homeline sent two more missions before writing off the timeline as a victim of some disaster--an unexpected nuclear war or asteroid strike were the two biggest contenders.  It would have stayed that way if it had not been for a psionic world-jumper whose lover had been on the first rescue mission.  Strictly without orders, she jumped to Retrograde in seach of him, to discover that he and his companions were alive, holed up on the 80th floor of the World Trade Center and living off what remained of their conveyor's supplies and snacks that had been hidden in office-workers' desks.

     After rescuing its people--one of the researchers who'd been on Retrograde at the time of the Change improbably remained alive, as did a number of members of the second rescue expedition--Homeline was unsure of what to do with Retrograde.  They are frankly afraid of doing anything that might attract to Homeline the attention of whoever or whatever caused the Change.  The fact that no one even has the faintest clue of what sort of force could have done it--though guesses range from angry God(s) through disgruntled fae to, in one local's plangent phrase, "Alien Space Bats"--only makes Infinity's reclassification of Retrograde as a Z1 timeline more definite.  Since the line has decidedly ceased to be an echo, and they're pretty sure Centrum doesn't know about it anyway, the current Homeline presence consists of one extremely cautious researcher and a bodyguard who excelled in the Patrol Academy's low-tech combat classes.

     But what really scares Infinity is the date of Van Zandt's first crosstime transition: 3:17 am GMT, 18 March 1998...