.

TEMPORAL LEAP: INCIPIENS REBORN

RESURRECTION

ONE: REVELATIONS

Human beings are creatures of habit. The world around us may change, but there are always certain things whose daily presence we naturally take for granted. Mundane things, like the feeling of your mattress, the climbing sun peeking in through the windows, a morning cup of coffee. Vital things, like being able to feel your limbs, see your hands...or to have a body at all.

So when I came to one day without any of those things, I was understandably rather perturbed.

I was enveloped in a strange sensation of weightlessness, as if I was floating along on some sort of current. It wasn't even as if I had a cohesive form of some sort and outside was a metaphorical river pulling me along, no… Instead, I felt...infused into the current itself, with no discernable distinction between myself and whatever it was that was drawing me into the unknown. It was dark, almost oppressively so. I couldn't see it - if the term even applied here - but I felt it. The blackness was a presence, not quite tangible or capable of being grasped, but always looming in the background, as if I were a stream of molecules drifting towards a black hole, with the current acting as its gravity.

Anyone would have expected to be metaphorically shitting themselves by that point, but I didn't - or more accurately, I couldn't. Something about my new world had locked my consciousness into a state of hyperawareness, suppressing everything irrelevant to receiving stimuli. The cold fist of fear that would have been crushing my heart anywhere else was nowhere to be found. Instead, I simply existed, bound to this alien state of limbo.

I drifted along like that for a while. I don't know how long it took, or if time was even still of any relevance in that space. But I do remember when it started to change.

It began with my state of diffusion. Before I had been one with the current, unable to tell the difference between myself and my strange carrier. But now, I could start to feel heat, and an increasing sense of...cohesion, if you could call it that. Simultaneously, I felt the pull of the current pick up, slowly transitioning from a leisurely drift to a focused tug.

Then the fireworks started. Brilliant pulses of light in every color of the spectrum imaginable, synthesizing and flaring up into a giant cone of luminosity, slowly melding into a blindingly pure expanse of white. I was now hurtling through the center of the cone as vast sheets of light soared out and away, as if driving the darkness back. My speed was blinding now, as I shot forward at an impossible velocity, and then I was falling, falling…

The falling stopped, and I opened my eyes.

The first thing that popped into my mind was the fact that I had eyes now, which meant…

I looked down, and saw that my body was whole again, features and all. Apprehensively, I wiggled my extremities to make sure they worked. They did, to my relief. My clothes had disappeared, leaving me completely nude. I shivered reflexively and rubbed my arms together, taking some small comfort in the warmth.

As if in response to my thoughts, a set of neatly folded clothes appeared at my feet; a simple white collared dress shirt, grey boxer shorts, black dress pants, matching socks and shoes. Stooping down, I examined them curiously for a second before putting them on without further thought, merely glad to have some form of clothing available.

With that addressed, I turned to take in my surroundings.

I stood in the center of a small white box of a room, brightly lit by lights that weren't there. It was completely unremarkable, featureless save for a single opaque glass door, a simple affair with a blinking red light that flashed green as I tentatively stepped towards it. The door hissed softly before sliding open to reveal an executive office suite, of all things.

Large sheets of frosted glass window stood on all four sides. A rather modern and expensive-looking office desk occupied the center of the room, with a simple but comfortable chair on my side of the room and a sleek leather swivel chair opposite. But what most caught my eye was the asari sitting in the swivel chair, elbows on the table and drumming her fingers on the polished wooden surface. "Come in." she called, "Take a seat. Or don't," she continued, as I remained standing there, staring blankly at her. "Floor works too."

I took the chair.

"Now…" she grumbled, rummaging through her drawers, "where the hell did I...ah." She pulled out a thick folder and turned to the beginning. "Activate case file for Mr. Li." she said aloud, pulling up a holographic screen.

I felt a tingling in the back of my skull, and then a wave of lightheadedness, as if some mental block had been lifted, and my mind was suddenly racing at a hundred miles a second.

What...where...how….?

I twitched momentarily, then threw up.

"Ugh...fuuck…"

"Great." the asari muttered. I heard her press a button, and the mess on the floor was slowly sucked into the ground through some sort of cleaning system. A glass of water appeared, with which I gratefully rinsed out my mouth before spitting it all out into a helpfully provided bucket. "Better?"

"Yeah." I said dazedly. "Thanks." Then, something clicked into place that hadn't before in my dazed state of mind. "Wait, so you're-"

"An asari, yeah."

"But-"

"Asari."

"So-"

"Uh-huh."

"And-"

"Yup."

My jaw dropped. "What the hell..."

"Well, I'm not a asari, strictly speaking." the asari said, doing nothing to dispel my confusion and absolutely everything to further it. "I just liked the form. The real asari have their crests crammed up their collective asses, but what the hell, the whole "long life" thing seemed fitting. Speaking of that, congratulations."

"...thanks?" I ventured, clueless as to what she was talking about. "What did I do, exactly?"

"You won."

"That's great..." I responded. An awkward silence. "Won what?"

"The game of life, so to speak."

"The game of li-" I stopped as my brain finally came to the obvious conclusion. A moment of silence followed as I mentally rebooted. "What."

"It happens." the asari shrugged.

"How?" I whispered. I had to know.

"Freak accident. Small plane cuts out while coming in for a landing and plows into the highway hitting three cars, including your own. You take the brunt of the impact and die instantly. Done."

"Dead." I muttered hollowly. "Fuck me..."

"I'll pass." the asari said drily. "Besides, your files say here that you hadn't quite gotten to tha-"

"Oi!" I spluttered indignantly, springing upright and glaring.

The asari grinned, then turned a page in the folder. "So...Alex Li. Nineteen years old, Taiwanese-American, attending school at the University of Washington. Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, currently residing in Santa Clara, California. Born to parents Jessica Xiang and Liam Li, had you and one other child, currently wrapping up a nasty divorce and etcetera, etcetera, you're dead, I know all your shit, no point in repeating your whole damn life story." The folder snapped shut, the asari tossing it casually to one side. She leaned back and regarded me with a seasoned air, as if this was all very routine for her. "Do you know where you are?"

I chuckled mirthlessly, the finality of my demise bestowing upon me a feeling of grudging acceptance. "I guess so. Limbo? Purgatory?"

The asari shrugged. "More or less. I'm Saffron, your supervisor."

"...I have a supervisor now." I said flatly.

"I'll explain more in a little bit. Now, I'm not going to bore you with any lofty existential crap, but you are here, dead, hearing your life choices coming to fruition, and that means that you do have a choice to make."

Slow breath. "I'm not going to hell or anything, am I?"

"Nah." Saffron answered casually. "Generally, there would be more yelling on my part and more pants-shitting on yours. Besides, you're far off from the type of person who might even have a chance of going to the firepits."

"Well, that's nice." I muttered.

"That still leaves you a few options." the asari explained. "You can choose to have your spirit processed and recycled, which means that it'll be purged and then transferred to another living being somewhere else in the universe. That will mean the effective end of your life as you know it and the obliteration of your consciousness."

I regarded her with the skepticism of Spock in the middle of a tea leaf reading.

"Is the good place an option for you? Well, here's how it breaks down. To qualify for the good place, we generally look for a few things. No assholes. People who've lived their lives to the fullest, who strive to leave the world a little better than when they came into it, and do it all for an intrinsic sense of what's right rather than out of an expectation of eternal afterlife. Self-actualization, in a way."

Despite myself, I let out a snort and chuckled for a moment. Oh man, so much for the hellfire and brimstone gods of Earth religion…

"Ironic, no?" Saffron commented, as if reading my mind. To be real, she probably had. "The ones who act nice hoping for eternal payout usually just get sent straight to the recycle. Try again!" she called, as if she were consigning someone to the dustbin right there.

"So, where do I fit into all this?" I asked, shifting in my seat.

"Getting to it. Now, we split this category into two groups. One, there are people who've spent the majority of their lives as outlined previously. They're granted access to the good place without a hitch. Most do, but some choose not to and instead just want to close out their lives, so we let them. Note that if anyone who chooses the good place eventually reaches the point where they're irrevocably bored shitless, they can still choose to then head to the recycle and have their spirit purified and their consciousness terminated at that point in time."

My jaw dropped just a tiny bit in astonishment.

"Then we get the other group, which includes people who came to the realization later in life that they wanted to live their lives in this manner, but died before they could really act on it. That includes you."

I swallowed nervously and tried not to squirm.

"So," Saffron said, casually leaning back in her chair, "what we do is give people like you the opportunity to go somewhere fresh. Call it another world, timeline, alternate universe, whatever. You get the chance to live another life in that world and effect some positive change with that new life and new life mentality. In return, you get an opportunity at a nice retirement in the afterlife."

I looked at Saffron's blue skin, her crest, her asari-ness, and suddenly everything slid into place. Truth be told, I had almost stopped noticing, having been so absorbed by my new situation. "Mass Effect." I mouthed.

"Ten out of ten for context. Mass Effect. I think you can imagine what we want you to do. As your supervisor, I'll be handling your case and providing limited support once you're on the ground. Suggestions on your next options, intel, things like that. But ultimately, we try to place an emphasis on autonomy. Now, that pretty much covers all I really need to say, but I'm sure you have questions. So if you have them, shoot."

I thought for a bit, and decided to ask the least life-threatening question first. "What happens to the people who go to hell?"

Saffron gestured indifferently. "They stay there and suffer for a bit while we put the screws to them. Once they've been broken, we purge their spirits vigorously and then send them to the recycle." Seeing my expression, she added, "Past a certain period, there's really no point in keeping spirits around. Once we've made our point, they're just taking up space."

I was taken aback at the clinicalness of her explanation, but I asked the next question regardless. I was feeling comfortable enough around Saffron, so I didn't think that she would condemn me to the inferno for asking. At least, I hoped so. "So..." I said, feeling my heart rate start to rise, "how am I supposed to know that any of this is real? Or that this isn't some sort of elaborate ruse?"

Internally, my heart reached a muffled crescendo.

But to my relief, the asari merely shrugged. "Well, think about it. If you're dreaming, then you know there are certain things you can do to check for dreaming; distorted reflections, telekinesis, foggy perception, whatever. Go ahead, try it."

I tried, with no success.

"You ask if this is real. Well, what the hell is real? How do you define real? At its essence, real is just a series of electrical signals being translated by your brain." She tapped her forehead. "Sight, smell, taste, touch. All of it."

I grinned at the reference.

"Now, this could very well be a trick. Someone could be feeding your brain false signals right now and you would never know it. So how do you know you can trust me? You don't." She shrugged again, holding out her hand. A cup of coffee appeared, and she took a sip. "You can't know for sure. You'll have to decide for yourself."

I processed that for a bit, and finally nodded in acceptance. She's right. This is my reality now, like it or not. Hopefully, assuming it all stays consistent…then I can know that it's real.

"So," I eventually said, "tell me more about this assignment."

"...fair amount of latitude on this mission," Saffron was saying. "I'll leave it to you as to where and when you want to be inserted. I can give you more location-specific details once you decide." She gestured vaguely. "There's a table over there, with a pen and notepad. Go ahead and think it through. I'll be here."

I meandered over to the table and took a seat. Over the next hour while alternating between bursts of furious scribbling and long stretches of thoughtful stillness, I ended up hammering out the following:

Specifics of Dropoff

Gameplan?

Possibilities:

Join Shepard. Benefits: Known quantity, known timeline and locations. Chance to meet some of my favorite characters! Cons: Less freedom of movement. Many paths closed. Extras: Heavy combat.

Strike out on own: Pros: Freedom of movement. More paths available. Cons: Hard to get access to people up high, have to establish myself from the ground up. No nostalgia factor. No plan?

"Damn." I muttered, and stood up to pace around the table, thinking furiously all the while.

The decision turned out to be a simple matter of breaking down opportunity costs. Quite plainly, I had the best chance to use my foreknowledge and get it to higher-ups with the influence of the first human Spectre...not to mention the future Shadow Broker, a krogan warlord, a quarian admiral, a turian archangel, and another human Spectre. With that, I crossed out S̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶w̶n̶ and put a checkmark next to Join Shepard.

My eyes flickered to the next item on the list, which read "Year of Insertion"

"Something not too far off, but enough time to prepare…" I muttered, "When might that be..?"

After three instances of chewing lightly on my pen and another lap around the table, I scribbled down "August 2182".

"Now..."

Possible Locations

Citadel

O̶m̶e̶g̶a̶ no shit

Illium

Earth

Thessia

Sur'Kesh

Palaven

T̶u̶c̶h̶a̶n̶k̶a̶ are you fucking serious?

After a bit of thought, I crossed out two more and added addendums:

P̶a̶l̶a̶v̶e̶n̶ still lingering animosity from First Contact. Cold reception at best, hostile one at worst.

I̶l̶l̶i̶u̶m̶ Would probably end up either as someone's slave or lying facedown in some alleyway with a knife in my back.

"Shit." I muttered, as another point arose. I needed to be in a place that Shepard could be relied on to visit consistently and over an extended period of time. With that, I crossed out a few more items, and was left with…

"Huh." I murmured to myself. "Well...I always did want to visit the Citadel."

"Looks good." Saffron said, sliding my notes back across to me. "You're sure about everything?"

"Yeah." I said, trying not to second-guess myself.

"Great." she said, yawning loudly. "Dammit, more coffee." she muttered, and summoned another cup.

"Why would a higher being be drinking coffee?" I asked curiously.

Saffron made a face. "Just because we have powers and responsibilities on another plane of existence doesn't mean we lack the ability to enjoy normal things. Hell, having access to cool perks is half the fun of this job."

I cocked my head. "Just how do you fit into this whole hierarchy of...spiritual moderation, I guess you could call it?"

Saffron took another sip and nodded agreement. "Yeah, about. There's not really a name for it per se, but it works. I operate as part of a loose collective of powers, and together we manage all the billions of deceased souls coming in from the various universes. Generally, we operate autonomously, only answering to a panel when we screw up and break the rules. Those are temporary, assembled for the sole purpose of judging that one case and then to disband immediately afterwards. Everyone is in rotation to be an arbitrator on one case or another, so it's a fairly even power distribution." The asari paused to shuffle and sort some folders. "Screw-ups are rare, though - rare enough that I haven't served on a panel yet. There simply haven't been enough cases for the rotation to come around to me."

There was a short silence while Saffron typed out a few things and I toyed with the fabric on my chair. "What kind of rules are we talking about here?" I queried.

"Abuse of power, mostly. We don't like it when power of our calibre is brought into play in standard universes, mostly because it tends to fuck with the temporal stability and fundamental fabric of that universe. Too many variables and chances to screw things up. That's why we seek out people like you for jobs like this."

I looked at her curiously. "Explain?"

"You're what we call an agent. Your origin is from a standard universe and thus you possess no more inherent power than any other sapient being of complex intelligence. We're what you might call 'higher beings', fundamentally different because of the powers that we possess. Since you don't have those powers, you are unable to cause chaos and pandemonium in your new universe and thus can operate without the need for so much restraint. Then there are the more expected reasons, such as how absolute power corrupts, etcetera, etcetera. To be honest, unless a situation is extremely drastic, we don't interfere with regular operation of a universe at all."

I let out a low whistle, impressed. "Yeah, ok. Point made."

Saffron pushed a small piece of paper towards me, along with a pen. "Here. Standard consent form. Make sure you understand it fully."

I took it and read, surprised at the shortness of the statement. It merely read:

As a recently deceased member of the mortal world choosing to undertake a new mission in another to earn entrance to the afterlife, I the undersigned understand that any such excursion is voluntary and acknowledge the risks inherent in my selection, up to and including death and permanent termination of my consciousness should the worst come to pass.

"Last chance." Saffron said flatly.

I looked at her, then back at the paper. A moment's pause...then pen met paper, and it was done.

A/N: I'm back.

Formerly known as Warhammer 2-4, this is The Silent Orator with Temporal Leap: Incipiens (Reborn). The creativity bug saw fit to bite me once again, so I've started writing again. Things will be a little different this time around. Canon-wise, you can expect me to take some cues from the original Incipiens, such as joining SR, but not too much. I will say this right now: NOTHING FROM THE ORIGINAL INCIPIENS IS 100% GUARANTEED TO BE IN THIS RETCON.

One of the reasons I stopped writing in the first place was because the story had moved away from what I wanted it to be. For this reason, I will be writing chapters deliberately, with no predetermined publish dates. This may take weeks, months, or heaven forbid, even years (but you can count that as very unlikely). I will be focusing on quality first and foremost, and I will not release a chapter until I am satisfied. This story died once, and I have no desire to see it do so again.

That said, I have plans for the series. The most immediate one involves a somewhat bold plan: I will be writing Incipiens Reborn up to a certain point, likely joining SR, and then I will stop writing TL: IR for that period and immediately skip ahead to the second chapter of the Temporal Leap continuity, TL: Morior Invictus, which will cover Alex's first time around with Shepard. My reasoning for this is pretty straightforward in that I feel like trying to reconstruct all the stuff I tried to write the first time could potentially bog me down again and discourage me. No thanks. TL: IR will be revisited at a later date, but not immediately. Any potential plot points in the period of time covered by the unwritten parts of TL: IR will be fleshed out before they manifest in later chapters.

Many thanks go to my loyal beta reader The Blocked Writer. Shoutout to him for helping me flesh out many of the rules and pathways of Purgatory. I'm sure he won't mind if I tell you guys to check out his works..

Those are the major things I wanted to say. But one more….it's good to be back.

Some silly things:

No, I will not be making Alex into a Mass Effect Jack Sparrow.

No, none of the personal info in Alex's file is actually true.

HOLY FUCK FALLOUT 4 CONFIRMED.

….does anyone want to buy it for me? Anyone? No? Kill myself? I'll go do that.. :(