Quantum Flux

In one possible future, by the year 2065, the United States have become world imperialists. Not satisfied with the economic and military defeat and annexation of old rivals Russia and China, having at long last brought Africa and the Middles East into the fold, only a small coalition of nations remains in opposition, including Australia, New Zealand, England, Scandinavia, and Japan. It is the latter's hyper-advanced technology which has allowed the resistance to survive in the face of such superior numbers.

Toshiro was only 8 when the third great world war erupted. A prodigiously bright child, he scored highly in math and the sciences, eventually specializing in quantum mechanics, and by age 15 had been invited into a special magnet research think-tank funded by Japan's leading technological giant, Shinkawa Heavy Industries.

Neikani Shinkawa had risen to power in the zaibatsu after her father, CEO and brilliant technologist Katsuhiro Shinkawa was assassinated by US special forces in the year 2070. The young Toshiro had caught her attention with his revolutionary theories about quantum superstrings, and theoretical temporal manipulation, and took a personal interest in supporting his line of research. The two became very close over the next 2 years, developing a complicated and eventually romantic relationship.

Two years later, she revealed to him that she had taken his ideas beyond the theoretical. In the bowels of a hidden Shinkawa research bunker, she had created the world's first fully functional time machine. Much to his shock and dismay however, she also revealed her motivation...to go back, and usurp global power and dominance. To destroy the United States from the inside out, and dismantle the superpower before it could become a threat to the future.

At first, Toshiro thought she must be joking, but Neikani's obsession and fanaticism would not be denied, and he realized that ultimately she had been using him for her own ends more than she genuinely cared about him. The two lovers quarreled, but when Toshiro went to sabotage the machine, she clubbed him over the head with a wrench. When he came to, the activation sequence was counting down. Desperate to stop her, Toshiro attempted to overload the system, but he was too late. The machine was destroyed, but computer telemetry showed that she had successfully arrived in the year 2000, with all her knowledge of the future, technology and finance.

Toshiro was able to retrieve the quantum distortion module and make his way back, enlisting his past and alternate selves to break into Shinkawa.

Using his access to the corporation, he stole a prototype next-gen military exo-armor, and built the quantum module into it's frame. Setting the system to chase her back to her arrival, Toshiro sidestepped into the timestream. Unfortunately he did not foresee the coming of a Temporal Maelstrom.

In Toshiro's version of history, while technology had advanced, super-powered beings never came into existence. The Temporal Maelstrom must have bled across multiple possible realities because it stopped his time travel in it's tracks. Rather than arriving in the year 2000, it was 2015, Toshiro was trapped, and his former lover turned nemesis had a 15 year head start on her nefarious master plan.