Time Will Decide For Us
Prologue: Diane
It was a period in the history of the Canon Protection Initiative which came to be known as the Sundering. For the fourth time, civil war tore through the headquarters of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum. When the dust settled, the tyrannical Departments of Efficiency and Author Correction had been overthrown, the oppressive regime of the Board of Flowers ended at last. In the shattered heart of HQ a meeting was held, a great Council on a scale not seen since the first Civil War over Origin some seventy years before. The Sub Rosa, last of the Firstborn, was given permission to speak.
For one hundred years we Flowers have ruled the PPC. No more. The younger generation has nearly destroyed us; I will not allow this to happen again. Children of the Multiverse, I commit this Organisation into your hands.
Shocked to the core, and left for the first time without a central governing body, the PPC scattered. The Departments fled to any number of worlds and assumed new names - the Paladins and Rangers, Technomancers and Harpers. Their only connection to the past was through the rebuilt HQ now known as the House of Rhodes (but who remembered the Rhododendron's sacrifice?), but they held true to their roots and rules. Across the Multiverse they hunted badfic and Mary-Sues together, ridding the Word Worlds of their influence.
But all that was thirty years ago.
~
We are the Others,
We serve different forces,
But in the Twilight there is no difference between
the absence of Dark and the absence of Light.
Our struggle is capable of destroying the world.
We have concluded a Great Treaty, a truce.
Each side shall live according to its own laws,
Each side shall have its own rights.
We delimit our own rights and our own laws.
We are the Others.
We establish the Night Watch,
So that the forces of Light may monitor the forces of Dark.
We are the Others.
We establish the Day Watch,
So that the forces of Dark may monitor the forces of Light.
Time will decide for us.
"Hmm."
Resting her head on her husband's lap, Diane Peryan flicked through the thick book to another passage.
"It's impossible to turn a human being into an Other. Impossible! There's no way. Not even the Chalk of Destiny could have transformed your unborn daughter into an Other if she wasn't going to have been born an Other anyway."
Reaching one hand down to touch her enlarged belly, Diane felt one of the twins kick out as if in response. "Impossible?" she murmured. "Well, we'll see about that, won't we?"
"What's that, love?" Joshua Wilbur asked. Diane smiled up at him.
"Nothing important, sweetheart," she assured him. "I was just saying... we'll see."
Gulp. I rather suspect we will...
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Main - The Future - Time Will Decide For Us - Prologue: Diane
