"Shifts" copyright 2003 by Dave Van Domelen Derivative of properties held jointly by Z-Man Games and Atlas Games (copyright ceded to Z-Man Games) Carl Po liked these missions to the 1996 Juncture. Things weren't too much different from Home Juncture. Sure, they didn't have Arcanotech here, but the average JoJo on the street didn't have that kind of stuff back home either. It was less orderly here, you had to watch your back more for muggings and so forth, but it was...comfortable. You could take your leave from the squad and hit a bar or a knockingshop or whatever, and it'd feel right. Especially if you had a taste for the oldies when it came to music. To be totally honest, in fact, Hong Kong in 1996 was like a much more fun version of home. You didn't have to watch over your shoulder to make sure some busybody wasn't taking notes about every word that fell out of your mouth when you were drunk. And if you had the cash to spend, there was a lot more to spend it on...life was a lot tougher for the poor in 1996, but a lot better for those who had managed to claw their way out of that hole. Hell, back home even the squad leader ate the same Basic Protein Ration that the poorest of street trash did...the jump up to the sort of food available in 1996 was not just officer territory, it was command officer territory. Carl finished cleaning his BlueSpear and started reassembling it. Yep, 1996 was a nice place to visit, all and all. At least when no one was trying to kill you or eat your soul. Not like 1850, where things like basic hygiene were only just starting to catch on, and there were precisely zero cable channels. Nothing to do while on liberty there, not that there ever WAS liberty there. Too hard to blend in with the locals, only the scouts got to go into town. Grunts like Carl got to cool their heels in that creepy "Netherworld" between fire missions, or maybe hang out in a remote fort. Real fun there. He'd heard about 69 C.E. from a veteran, and it seemed like 1850 times a hundred, plus there were wandering demons looking for payback against the BuroMil. He finished putting the 'Spear back together just as the beeper in his helmet went off. Time to earn the big bucks he'd be shoving into some stripper's garter tonight.... * * * * Carl was relieved to be back in the year 1998. Home wasn't home anymore, and 1998 was now a lot closer to the world he grew up in than anything left in Home Juncture. The briefing officer called it a "Critical Shift". They'd been warned about this before Carl's first squad had been sent into the Netherworld, back when he was just a grunt and not an elite armored trooper. Sometimes the war through time changed stuff, and if you'd been in another era even once, you'd remember the way things used to be. Back in 2056, home had been pretty tame. Sure, there was Arcanotech creeping into everyday life, but it was a safe world, a sane one. Where the worst thing the average guy had to worry about was having a neighbor rat him out about his black market foodstuffs, and where the cops just carried revolvers and rubber truncheons, not gravity spears and zapguns. 2058 was sprocking INSANE. Like something out of a bad Sci Fi movie from the 1980s. The way it was explained to him, someone in the CDCA had figured out how to tweak things so that the new timeline would generate lots more spinoff tech that didn't require demon bits to run. While this meant that Carl no longer had to worry about his helmetcomp whispering damnations in his ear every so often, it also meant that Home Juncture was hardly recognizable anymore. Tech was fine to a point, but too much of it and people just stop being people anymore, eh? Carl shrugged into the last of his armor and got ready to step out into the steaming South American jungle. Good thing the armor was climate controlled. Time to roast some monkeys. * * * * The Netherworld really didn't have a year...rather, it had a whole bunch of 'em. Ask any rabble in the tunnels for the date, and you'd get a nearly random answer. Back home it was 2060, though, and things were even more of a madhouse. That's why Carl had angled for monster hunting duty: he'd rather face down slavering demons on a daily basis than spend another day seeing what runaway technology had done to his home. "Hey, Carl." That was Sofie Harrison, a CDCA wonk attached to the team because she had background in demons and magic and all that hoo-hah. "Yo, Sofie. How they hangin'? Ain't seen you in a few days." "Oh, I was on an errand into the Imperial Juncture," she shrugged. 73 C.E. by the calendar he grew up with, but the nutless wonders running the place didn't like their dates being referred to by an outsider system. "I feel *great*," she added. "Just spending a few days in a Juncture full of magic and *not* full of pollution or weird Arcanowave vibes is better than a full Rejuv course. Just don't let Bonengel know I said so," she winked. "Really," was my flat reply. "Oh, come on," she gently rapped the demon-scale shoulderpad I wore. "I've heard you complain about the Home Juncture before. You and I both know the CDCA made a big mistake when it tried to mix tech and magic, it's just not doing the world any good. Between that and all the critical shifts, the future just isn't what it used to be." I nodded in grudging agreement. "Even the demons feel...cleaner, I suppose, than anything back 'home' anymore. Even if it's a purity of wanting to eat your entrails and then snack on your spirit." At that point, I noticed she was toying with a small box. "What's that?" "Hm? Oh, just a little something to keep out eavesdroppers. Come on, you don't think I'd be complaining about our glorious government if I didn't know for sure who could and couldn't hear me?" My eyes widened a little at the realization that I had just been dragged into a conspiracy. Not safe, even here in the Netherworld. If Sofie got caught, I'd be dragged down with her as soon as the Brain Bug got slapped on her temples. "Sorry," she apologized, as if she'd read my mind and not just my expression. "But things are going to get pretty bad in the next year or so, you probably won't survive the experience no matter whose side you're on. And wouldn't you rather die for the right reasons?" "Lady, there's no right reason to die. Soldiers who're willing to die for the cause usually do, in my experience. Tell me why I shouldn't just shoot you and present your body to the Biomass Conversion Center?" "Carl, I'm part of a growing movement that's going to fix everything the Buro and the CDCA have broken in the world. We won't just put things back to how they were in 2056, we're going to make them better. All the best aspects of the Imperial Juncture and Home Juncture, but as few of the bad aspects as we can manage. We're going to make the world pure again." "Keep talking...." * * * * What a ratfrag the last few months had been. Carl was still amazed that he'd survived even a day of this damn civil war, much less the entire thing. He hadn't heard from Sofie in weeks, didn't know if she was dead or just in hiding, prepping for the Big Event. Carl didn't know exactly what the Big Event was, of course. He was just a sympathetic soldier, not even an Initiate to the Purists. He knew he'd never master the complicated mathematics needed to step on even the lowest rung of the organization, he was still just a grunt at heart, even if he'd been promoted up to Captain in the tumult of the civil war. Home Juncture really sucked lately, but you get that during a civil war. All the bad craziness that had made him seek assignments in other Junctures was still there, plus city-destroying battles on top of that. Given his choice, he'd have stayed happily in the Imperial Juncture and ridden out the storm, but his TacOps Squad was considered too important to leave out in the sticks. They'd been recalled to 2062 by the BuroMil and put on a number of high-risk assignments, culminating in this hastily scratched-together assault force taking a Flying Fortress to attack a CDCA installation. Some kind of weird tower, probably a Chi-focusing device of some sort. "Carl," a voice whispered in his ear. He controlled his reaction, he knew what it was. An Aether Spirit sent by the Purists, a communications means of last resort and probably the only way they could have gotten to him inside this Flying Fortress. "The cube has eight sides," he subvocalized, a counter-sign to let the Spirit know it had found the right man. "It is vital to the purity of the world that this Flying Fortress not reach its target for another hour. You must delay it at any cost." There was a familiar faint whine as the Aether Spirit vanished into whatever Noetic realm it had come from. Half an hour later, Carl was still trying to find an unguarded power node when a wall of blackness swept across the Fortress. Apparently they hadn't needed the full hour after all. Immediately, the Fortress lurched to one side and started to plummet. Carl had trained in freefall combat in one of the stranger parts of the Netherworld, and quickly made his way the few dozen meters to an emergency hatch, pulling it open and clambering onto the outside of the falling behemoth. At least he'd get to see death coming, he reasoned. The water was rushing up to smash the mighty war machine into fragments, and at last Carl knew what the Big Plan was. Arcanowave tech and its spinoffs would no longer function. Somehow, the Purists had engineered a Critical Shift that had purified the world, erasing the perversions of nature the CDCA and Buro alike had relied on. He wouldn't live to see it, of course, but home would be a better place for those who did. Then the Fortress met the sea and Carl knew no more. * * * * Sofie turned away from the Memory Spirit crafted from the aetheric remnants of Carl Po. A construct, it could neither be gratified at the success the Purists had found, nor frustrated that the Critical Shift had been limited to the South Pacific. But she knew that if Carl had survived Day One of the New Calendar, he would have felt like New Sydney was his home....