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I remembered my dying act, the word I hastily marked in blood – TRAVR. It was an idea I’d had
while building the machine; the idea of an elite force of warriors who could use the device to
transport themselves to any point in space or time and right the wrongs of history, correcting
the missteps we had taken as a species and undoing millennia of suffering. We could become
protectors not only of The Earth, but of the greater collective, those worlds far removed from ours
– in time we could become Guardians of the Omniverse.
A word was not enough to preserve this idea, but perhaps a message …
3. Out of Time
Hades had me under constant surveillance. It was impossible for me to contact anyone outside of
my cell. My only hope was the machine. Unfortunately, by the time it was in a sufficient state to
begin sending broadcasts, Hades had enough working knowledge of it that there would be no time
for anyone to mount a resistance against them. I had to send a warning back through time, but
there was a problem. How could I find someone capable of receiving my message?
Then it hit me, there was one person who I might be able to reach; a childhood friend from my
hometown of Ghent – Jan Goetgeluk.
4. The Mistake
It was the summer of 2003. Jan and I had pooled our resources for a science project, and had
procured the necessary components to perform the infamous double-slit experiment. Its quantum
mysteries appealed to my theoretical mind, while the mechanical construction involving crystals
and lasers was a task that Jan (then a budding mechanical engineer) was eager to take on. Our
ambitious brief was to challenge the nature of causality. It was always believed that information
cannot travel back in time, and yet it had been proven that a photon can be made to retro-actively
collapse after it has reached its destination – simply by choosing to either destroy or observe the
recorded path it took. We called this phenomenon the ‘Medusa effect’.
I devised a method of harnessing the Medusa effect to read about a future event before it had
happened. While I must not say too much about how it worked, essentially we ran a series of
double-slit experiments and labelled them by letter. Each photon’s path would be encrypted,
and could not be decoded without the key. This key was a complex formula that related to the
contents of an article that would be published by a certain journal, on a certain date. It could not
be anticipated, or cracked. The order of letters would in the future determine which data would be
revealed, and which would be destroyed – sealing its fate in the present.
1. Collision
I became aware of Hades at great personal expense during my tenure as a science professor at
Cambridge University. My research project at that time sought to harness the power of quantum
mechanics to send vast amounts of data from one point in space-time to another. Few people
knew exactly what I was working on, as the government had classified it as Top Secret. This was
understandable - the potential to transport a human being instantly to another part of the galaxy,
or even another dimension entirely could shift the balance of power in favor of whoever had this
technology.
I had constructed a prototype quantum transportation machine unlike anything that had come
before, and was just waiting on some important data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to
complete my calculations. The LHC is a high-energy particle accelerator developed by CERN
(incidentally, the same organization from which the World Wide Web emerged). Indeed, I based
parts of the machine’s design on elements of the LHC.
With the new data from CERN in my hands, I was now able to test the machine. The results were
astonishing – I saw that this wouldn’t simply revolutionize particle physics, it could change the
world as we knew it. The Nobel Prize flashed before my eyes and before I could stop myself I had
circulated my findings amongst a small jury of peers. This was my greatest misjudgment. Somehow,
the paper got into the wrong hands, and days later my lab was broken into and raided. I had the
misfortune to be there when it happened, and the subsequent confrontation with the intruders
cost me my life.
2. Rebirth
My body was found in the Cavendish Laboratory on the 17th of August, 2012 next to an unusual
symbol that had been left at the scene. Also, my blood was smeared on a manila folder, obscuring
certain letters in my name, so that it formed the word TRAVR. Later, my body was stolen from the
morgue. Despite a police investigation and reward, my killers were never apprehended. Fearing the
disastrous consequences of my research falling into enemy hands, the government subsequently
covered up almost all traces of the crime.
I was reanimated, and found myself a captive of a group I later came to know as Hades. They had
brought me back to life somehow in order to complete my research, which they were unable to
replicate on their own. Despite my best efforts, their control over me began to subvert my will, and
I knew it was only a matter of time before they forced me to reveal the secrets of the machine.
18-1. TRAVR
Doc V: “My name is Doctor Tristan Verstraeten, also
known as ‘Doc V’. I am the founder of the TRAVR
organization. You have been invited to join our
battle against Hades - an evil secret-society bent on
enslaving mankind. This is my story.”
