- Four months since arrival -

In the year 1096 AD, the first crusade began.

In the year 1206 AD, Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and began a quest to topple China.

In the year 1521 AD, the Aztec Empire was crushed by Hernándo Cortés.

In the year 1803 AD, the Napoleonic Wars began and lasted until 1815.

In 1914 AD, World War I began and did not end until 1918.

In 1939 AD, World War II began and did not end until 1945.

In the year 1947 AD, the arms race known as the Cold War began and did not cease until 1991.

In the years 1950 AD and 1955 AD, respectively, the Korean and Vietnam wars began and then ended in the years 1953 and 1975, respectively.

In the year 2001 AD, the War on Terror began.

This is the true and correct history. This is the history that remains unaltered.

But in the year 2018 AD, the Corallians arrived on Earth. In a few years, they would grow and evolve to the point of being capable of manipulating, and forgetting, time itself. By the year 2021 AD, time on Earth would no longer be linear.

In this timeline, this universe, several wars soon break out between humanity and the Corallians, humankind flees from the Earth in a mass exodus and does not return for 10,000 years. They survived by colonizing other planets, and the group that returned to Earth does not recognize it as such.

For 2,000 years these humans live on the planet largely unaware of the Corallian presence, until war once again breaks out and results in the creation of the 'God Tree' aka Shinju. One thousand years after it's creation, Otsutsuki Kaguya consumes the fruit of the Shinju, which is also the Corallian's Control Cluster. Another millenia has passed since then. One more shall pass until the opportunity again presents itself to rectify the schism between humanity and the Corallians, and to save life on this Earth and all others. Time is catching up to us. The Question Limitation is eminent.

That is the information the Shinju gave me when I asked it where I came from.

Since that conversation, many of my memories have returned. None of them predate the year 2018 AD. Nothing I can remember conflicts with the information it gave me.

What I do remember is that I was a young researcher, a biochemist, on assignment in the Carribean. A new species of coral had appeared and was growing at an astronomical rate. Many had gone before me; it was one of those new sciencey things along with quantum mechanics and the healthcare system that was all the buzz at the time.

But this coral wasn't like anything we'd seen before. It was eating anything and everything - bacteria, fungi, cetaceans, fish, some dolphins, a beaked whale...

The most terrifying and intriguing aspect about this new species was the manner in which it consumed things - it wasn't alive enough to have teeth, or a digestive system even. Yes, it was coral, but it also was not coral. The communities of lifeforms in coral survive off of nutrients, plankton, and other small oceanic debris. This coral moved the very rocks themselves, something they are not physically capable of doing, and emitted a never before seen elementary particle byproduct: trapars, short for transparent luminary particle. These particles gave off a new form of radiation as well, and seemed to interact with other forces in physics. If true, it not only explains how the new species was able to move the rocks, but also would open many opportunities for physicists.

My assignment as a biochemist was to discover more about this species metabolism. The trapars were emitted any time it consumed something, and throughout the coral community itself. Their metabolic processes begin at physical contact with another lifeform, either on the rockface or on the living corals themselves. Trapars flow directly into the living being in contact, immobilizing it, and that is when the magic would happen: the coral, rock and all, would grow into the victim. This was not a parasitic or viral process. This was true fusion, something the biological community had never seen before. A daydream, a fantasy. Happening again and again right before our eyes. The option of collecting a specimen was a touchy argument at first, especially for our physicists on site who continuously demanded that we be careful not to disturb the environment. They claimed that entanglement was occurring spontaneously during the process, and they were sounding more and more like activists each day.

At some point, things went wrong.

Someone got greedy, or too stressed out. I was shot. And underwater. There had been a lot of talk about trapars and the immobilization of lifeforms before that, arguments about entanglement and metaphysical comments and so on. The fusion process wasn't through a biological one, it was true, but to say these things could alter the very laws of physics? It really was a bit much, but now that my life was ebbing away and my mind not in a clear place, I thought why not? Who knows if it's alive, and if it is, fusion was better than me dying. So I took the risk and found out. And now I am here, 14,000 years in the future.

At least I got my answer.

But it's not all well and good. There are still a ton of problems, mainly this thing with different timelines and the Control Cluster. So the Shinju wants us to fix it's relationship with Kaguya and force her to fuse with it, to avoid something known as the Question Limitation. Every time I think about that, I experience cognitive dissonance and I have no clue why. It's as if there is a memory of a memory that I am being pushed away from recalling.

The people that were there when it said these things about the world's history seem bothered by it, relieved, angry, and so on. A mix of all the feelings I came in with. To be honest, I can only be glad that I have some memories back and that I am finally able to make sense of some of this information. That and my college education seems to have returned to me, thank God. Though I still don't remember my true name. It's not so bad, getting used to 'Tess' hasn't exactly been an option, so it's not like there's been any difficulty. I don't know how I feel about having my memories of family and friends taken away from me, I am rather irritated by it, but I don't have the ability to feel anything deeper since I don't know anything about those people.

Part of me hopes I won't remember - it would just be terrible. And I do not want to think about what happened to the people I cared for. Just knowing it's a possibility angers me to no end.