- Are there any figures from the future that Paradox knew personally? In what way is his memory of them distorted? What kind of hero do they want him to be?
Aside from [player characters]? There's Doctor Bill Tyson, chief temporal science officer. I literally wouldn't be here without him. He was the one who figured out how to contain and use a paradox for our own needs. He was the leading scientist on the understanding of time before the Tangee silenced him... N-no, he was a collaborator with the Tangee before he defected to our side... No, that's not it either. Or is it? If he were here I think he'd want me to use my head before I took action, to work out how to get the best possible result.
Next there's August, a Roman centurion... a soldier from the future... a common man turned hero... was he my dad? I hope he's not that last one. I remember him being driven, where the ends justify the means. I'm sure he'd want me to prevent the cataclysm at any cost. I don't know if I can do that, go as far as he can. How would that make us any better than the Tangee? But maybe morality isn't a luxury we can't afford when facing the end of existence.
There's one more, someone I barely remember who was incredibly important. It's like that feeling you get when you wonder if you've left the stove on, a ghostly tingle in the back of your mind of something that may or may not be. Let me think. His name was... Isaac Cross? My older self. But if he actually was there at the end, that would mean...
- Who is Paradox staying with in his time in the present? Why did they take him in? What kind of hero do they want him to be?
I'm sure there was a plan for my trip into the past, but I don't remember what that is. There may have been an advance team sent to before the Tangee arrived to stop the cataclysm before they arrived, and to lay the ground work for the second wave of time travelers should they fail, but I don't know how to contact them or even if that's true or not. I've been looking into heroes and villains like Timeline and Miss Fortune, if there were others that came before me then maybe they were altered by the paradox like I was.
For now I'm placed in the foster care system, feigning amnesia. I've been keeping my identity secret, I can't have any Crosses in the past confused over how they've managed to gain a new family member out of thin air. There were far too many people misplaced during the invasion, as the government agencies that are responsible for restoring the status quo after superpowered battles are no longer functioning normally in Halcyon and a lot of city records were destroyed. This includes a number of misplaced minors whose parents have either died or cannot be found, putting a heavy strain on child welfare services.
My guardian is Natalie Turner, and I live with almost a dozen other kids my age and younger. Its crowded, but from what I understand child welfare wasn't doing that great even before the invasion. Fortunately tight living spaces and taking responsibility for younger kids isn't anything new to me, and I got pretty lucky with Natalie. She does what she can the best that she can, she focuses on the little things that makes life better for the people around her and she encourages us to do the same. I think she'd disapprove of my heroing though if she ever knew about it. Standing against the Tangee is far too dangerous. None of them know what's really at stake.
- What about the present is most alluring? What about the future does Paradox miss the most?
It's got to be linear time, hands down. You have no idea just how swoop it is to experience the present one sequential moment at a time. Let me try to explain: imagine if I were to drop an apple. You experience the fall of the apple as linear time, you observe the sequence of events from the moment the apple leaves my hand to the moment it hits the ground. Non-linear time has no handy reference points like "apple in hand" or "apple on ground", if you were to observe the apple drop in non-linear time you would see a long trail of apples leading from my hand to the ground. Put simply, non-linear time is not defined by singular points in time but rather the path that is taken where everything is connected and occurs at the same time.
Expanding on that, you would also see its path from when it was an apple blossom winding its way to my hand to the end where it sits and rots on the ground. In the most extreme case of non-linear time, you would the apple trail branching off as all possible paths it could have taken is revealed. The apple may have fallen and rotted away, eaten from the inside by worms, chopped to bits and baked into a pie, or maybe even become an apple tree someday. I'm sure it must be fascinating to be the observer and see all the paths of the apple, but spare a moment to think of how the apple must feel.
What do I miss? That's hard to say. Reality was ripping itself apart at the seams so the future itself was pretty hard to love. I think I miss my memories the most though. I'm sure I had friends and family there, but every time I try to remember the names and faces shift and change. I can't remember them like I should.