Ranma 1/2 is the creation of Rumiko Takahashi and Sailor Moon is the creation of Naoko Takeuchi. This fan-fiction isn't intended for commercial use but is rather a tribute to Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon.

Ch11 Moving Finger

~*~Tendo Dojo~*~

"Would somebody mind explaining to me, other then the bloody obvious, just what in the hell I am looking at," fumed Nabiki.

"Shampoo also not understand."

"Linux OS is a new open source OS that Tegnum Renebris fast tracked to adoption," explained Beryl clearly troubled. "The plan was each kernel build would have a year assigned to it and each update would have a year count."

"Short version - this is from our future," growled Usagi. "Excuse my language, but how the hell does that even work? Does this mean that no matter what we do your company will create the technology that makes the Moon Kingdom possible, go back in time, and create the Moon Kingdom?"

"No," said Ami. "There is only one way time travel works without causing all kinds of paradoxes – Many Worlds Theory."

Beryl rubbed the bottom of her chin in thought. "I remember stumbling on that when I had a whim about going back in time and preventing the mass slaughter. That and the grandfather paradox showed that such an endeavor was a waste of time."

"Ok, for those of us who aren't in the know just what is this Many Worlds Theory and grandfather paradox?" asked Ranma.

"The grandfather paradox was Eisenstein's reasoning why time travel should be impossible. In a nut shell suppose you go back in time and prevent your grandparents from meeting. But that would mean you were never born and couldn't interfere with their meeting. That is the paradox."

Ami nodded. "Many Worlds Theory is the way around that paradox. In it history is a bunch of branching paths and going back in time puts you on a different path."

"What about Usagi's suggestion?"

"That is a time loop or as the role playing supplement that came out just last year, GURPS Time Travel, calls it Fixed Time. Under Fixed Time time travel is part of history and going back in time to change things results in those things happening. The problem with that is the Free Lunch paradox."

"I assumed that doesn't mean free food," commented Gernma.

"No. It doesn't," said Beryl shaking her head while rolling her eyes and muttering something how could anyone be so dumb. "The paradox is that information or worse an object exists as part of history but no one created it."

"I think I see what that means," commented Ko Lon. "It would be as if I went back in time and taught someone the Kachū Tenshin Amaguriken technique and they became known as the 'inventor' of the technique. But in reality neither of us invented the technique; in fact no one did. And yet the technique exists."

"And it's worse for an object because each time through the loop it gets older until it finally breaks...breaking the loop," commented Ami.

"GURPS Time Travel suggested another option – the Many Worlds are actually parallel realities that don't have time passing at the same rate and so some worlds are 'echoes' of other realties at an earlier period of other's history. Another factor in that work is that the physical laws are not the same across realities."

"So it would be like time travel but without actual time travel," said Ami. "Would explain how the Time Space Door works. It is actually looking at parallel worlds not forward or back through time. But that means we have a version of this universe around what amounts to the 69th century out there."

"Which leaves the elephant in the room. Where are they? And why do it this way?" asked Rei.

"Interstellar space travel takes an insane amount of resources," said Ami. "Finding a black hole close to the Sol system would have given them the means to travel to other universes. But it would have to be a huge one otherwise it would spaghettify you which can be summed up as very unpleasant and gruesome way to die."

"While the resources to create an artificial black hole would also be insane it would have one key advantage – you would have a far better idea on what the solar system you would find would be like then sending probes off into the void," commented Beryl. "One thing is clear; it isn't our future as Tegnum Renebris wasn't founded here until 1973."

"As for what happened to them, that is the only record of Tegnum Renebris in the Mercury computer. Whatever communications there may have been between the two realities it ended at least57,000 years ago. Given the erasure of data likely on our end not theirs."

"But doesn't this mean no one really created the youma?" asked Genma.

Beryl looked at Genma like he had grown another head. "Wha…?"

"Why are you surprised? I'm not a total idiot."

"No. Just one most of the time," commented Ranma.

Beryl again tapped her cheek in thought. "I would say no. Just because this company was called Tegnum Renebris doesn't mean it had a relationship other then name to our version. Even if it somehow did, it would make no sense to send youma back in time if you were trying to use ki to build up an interplanetary colony in other reality. The long term plan is to update the kernel every 5 years so that 4967 yearcount would mean contact between the two realities didn't last much past the 20 year mark. It would have been hundreds of years before it would have been viable to send youma."

"So by the time everything became viable for the set up to support youma and Sailor Senshi they would have, at best, been myths and legends on par with Robin Hood or King Arthur," commented Ami.

Beryl nodded and then sighed. "Ok, any ideas on how to explain this and the other piece of information to the masses."

"You're kidding, right?" asked Nabiki. "There is no way to explain those two thingsthat isn't going to be akin to throwing a keg of gunpowder into a fire and then throwing gasoline on top of it."

"I have to agree," said Genma.

Beryl hung her head. "I guess the stress is getting to me but it isn't my decision. I've got to give the Dark Kingdom some advice on how to deal with this disaster."

"Shampoo not understand. Beryl Queen."

Beryl gave a humorless chuckle. "The Earth Kingdom always had a largely 'hands-off' approach with the youma clans being left to their own devices for the most part. If anything I did less ruling in the Dark Kingdom and even that diminished when I set up my company. I gave the youma the knowledge of the United States and that became the foundation of the government that currently runs the place. If I wasn't Queen in name only before I certainly am now. Best I can do is convince them how bad an idea some of their plans are. Even then I am not always successful. Anyone remember what happened to Ruhollah Khomeini about five years ago? That was the result of a 'real world' field test of the orange lantern. The youma took both him and herself out in that explosion. The only good thing that resulted out of that fiasco was a Dark Kingdom Presidential decree of no more Earth side field tests and a substantial push in the alternate fuel sources devision."

"I thought it was said to be the work of a suicide bomber," commented Ami.

"That is the way we played it up in the media. Though unless they were totally clueless the intelligence agencies of the US and USSR had to know that there was something 'off' about the whole thing. Now everyone knows about the general's teleport power and Project Lantern it's not going to take long before somebody puts the pieces together."

"Speaking of putting pieces together," began Ami.

Beryl laughed. "I figured you would realize that several things were 'off'."

"With the number of youma you were sending to Earth and your ability to return to Earth you could and should have taken over the planet ages ago."

"Jericho drove home the fact that my Earth my kingdom were gone. I used the generals' ability to go to Earth and return to the Dark Kingdom to sow the belief that I could leave at any time and it was only my loyalty that kept me there."

"You didn't because there was nothing to return to."

Beryl smiled sadly. "My kingdom was gone. All the support systems for it were gone. Youma are great fighters but afterword you need administrators and the culture was so different that no one had the skills to do it properly."

"Because the cultures you knew were also gone or no one outside you and the generals even remembered what then had been."

"Both really. Besides who wants to deal with put down the rebellion of the month that an aggressive take over would cause."

"Then there is the soul connection between the two princesses."

"That...was my idea," said a voice.

Turning they saw a woman with knee length green hair and piercing red eyes.

"Sailor Pluto. Or do you preferMeiou Setsuna?" asked Usagi narrowing her eyes.

"Just Setsuna. I don't know what was harder - convincing Queen Serenity the soul linking was a good idea or the earlier spicing of Queen Ge's food so she would have fraternal twins."

Beryl crossed her arms. "I take it there was a good reason for this, Setsuna." she said in a cold voice.

"My 'successor' told me what happened in her past and figured that if you had an elder sister that took after your youma heritage and if that sister was soul bonded to Queen Serenity's daughter the conditions that caused the Moon Kingdom to fall in her reality were less likely to happen. We didn't factor in how much that would cause Queen Serenity herself to change." Setsuna eyes were filled with pain. "I couldn't stop the fall of the Moon Kingdom but I will sure as hell stop the formation of Crystal Tokyo. After all I am the closest thing the Moon Kingdom had to a Guardian and it is my duty to make sure it isn't reborn as...that thing." She finished the venomous disgust clear in her voice.

"You consider yourself a Guardian?" growled Ranma in weird tone of voice that reminded those who had had it of Mistress Saturn when both host and spirit spoke together. "Well that explains a lot of your actions. The way you treat people be they human or youma as things rather then people. But from what one of us remember you were always secretive about your reasons and goals; why the change?"

"I think it was being like that that allowed the very future I was trying to prevent to happen. I will not make that mistake again."

"This Crystal Tokyo…" prodded Ranma.

"From what my 'successor' said it is place with no hate but also no joy, no pain but also no pleasure. A well intentioned mistake where humanity wasn't really human anymore but effectively biological robots with no emotions. It was built on another mistake which in turn was based on yet another mistake and it all went back to Beryl's battle with Queen Serenity."

"The way you keep saying 'successor'...you know what the Time Space Door really is."

"Yes. But it served our needs to pass it off as a machine to view the past and 'the future'. Not that it really did that. The only way I knew jack about the 'future' was if I could contact one of my counterparts in a universe where the passage of time was faster then our own. The past was easier as the Time Space Door was tied into all the computers of the Moon Kingdom. Couldn't view the first 5,000 years and there were other gaps but it helped in keeping up the perception everyone had of the position."

"And the mystery was key in hiding your blood line," commented Beryl.

Setsuna gave a short laugh. "There was a reason we only showed up at balls and major eventsand avoided the Earth Family like crazy."

Beryl smirked. "Didn't need to have bothered. It's so diluted that even I with my 12,000 years of experience I can't see it in your ki."

"What?"

Beryl reached over and grabbed the end of Setsuna's hair and rubbed in-between her fingers. "But my following of Gernma and picking up martial arts styles along the way have allowed me to tell the difference between natural hair color and a dye job." Beryl's smirk vanished and her eyes got hard. "Humans don't have naturally dark green hair."

Setsuna blinked a few time and then burst out laughing. "That's rich. Generation after generation each of us thought it would be our ki that gave us away. Not a skill anyone could have learned."

"To be fair it took me about 10 years to learn this skill," commented Beryl who sighed. "Your teleportation ability will come in handy in dealing with my two migraines and the idiot Guide who is selling packets of instant Jusenkyo water though magazines."

"Instant...you have got to be kidding me."

"At least it isn't the 1970s; otherwise that moron could be advertising that stuff in nearly every major US comic book in the same section with the x-ray specs and Sea-monkeys."

"Oh joy. Any other disasters I need to know about?"

"You want the short list?"

~*~Phoenix Mountain, couple days later~*~

Safuran stood on a balcony carved into the side of Phoenix Mountain that overlooked the valley. "Kiema, if everything about this Queen Beryl you have told me is true…"

"It is my Lord."

Safuran turned and glared at Kiema who fell to her knees her arms crossed in front of her. "As I was saying. She might be worthy to be treated as more than a Groundling."

A swirling black portal opened up four people stepped through. One was a blond haired woman in a gray uniform, another was a red haired girl perhaps not yet 18, the third was a younger girl with purple eyes and black hair, and then there was the last. Dressed in a purple dress a simple tiara crown atop her red hair her red eyes spoke of being a ruler for a long time.

"Good," said the woman. "As one ruler to another we should be on an equal footing. I imagine Kiema of the Daímonas clan has told you enough to know who I am."

"Queen Beryl. But these other people in our presence…"

"Saotome Ranma, if she had not been assassinated in her previous life she not I would be queen. Jadeite, my eldest Warrior Prince...well Princess thanks to Pool of Drowned Girl. And this young 10 year old girl...is the reincarnation of Sailor Saturn."

Safuran and Kiema both went ashen. Safuran used his ki sense and swallowed truly frightened for what was likely the first time in many rebirths. Looking at this girl...if it could be called a girl was like looking at Death itself. But it wasn't that what frightened him. It was the level of power he felt. Compared to this he was less then an insect. As expected Beryl had far less ki – much of it being diverted to keep her subjects fed but even adjusting for that Safuran didn't think Beryl held a candle to Sailor Saturn.

"I wanted to make sure I had the least insulting group with me," commented Beryl. "I don't trust Pluto as far as I can throw this mountain and so brought the only Sailor Senshi I knew of that was worthy to be in your presence."

Safuran nodded. "This Pluto…"

"Guardian of the Time Space door and walking talking fortune cookie," commented Beryl. "Manipulative and deceptive as any of the Daemon clan could be. Heck, with a little help from the last Queen of Mars they had me believing that Queen Serenity had with her greedy vindictive nature had killed 20 to 100 billion people. Ami recrunched the numbers using actual Moon Kingdom census data and exuding non humanoid ki. Turned out to be 11 million or just shy of the maximum total given to Hitler's Final Solution and nowhere near Stalin's much less Mao's death totals. But those were old school Daemons, you lot have toned down a lot in the 177 generations since, haven't you Kiema?"

Kiema was on her feet changing do her Daemon form as she did so. "So the legends that some of us managed to 'pull one' on you were true. We always thought is was senseless bragging as they said it was one last stab into the corpse that was Queen Serenity's reputation."

"From your tone you don't approve. While I don't either without access to the Mercury Computer there would be no way to know; they were just that good."

"I take I was right. Your sister returning did mean the Sailor Senshi would also return."

"But not on their own. Seems there is a Mau running around trying to not only bring back the old Senshi but create new ones in the bargain. That is how Usagi became Sailor Moon...to find the princess. Then there are the two rogue generals who think that the Seven Great Youma have also return and are running around with water guns filled with Pool of Life Draining Demon. That is how Sailor Saturn was woken up."

"I take it this...situation was what I was to be informed of by my contact."

"You like all youma assigned to Phoenix Mountain have a special status in the Dark Kingdom. You are the only ones who can have direct two way contact and that was because it was realized just how powerful Safuran was."

"Because you think he is family."

"Given the decrease in...normal human ki I had assumed that anyone of the royal line left would have a similar decrease in ki. Safuran fit that bill and with about 223 generations having passed all the information on the Earth Palace was irrelevant as it hidden under a special reflective dome in the middle of a salt flat, the last place anyone would expect for people who ruled youma would be expected to live."

Beryl continued, "The 'Earth Palace' everyone knew about was mainly a show piece - a misdirection. No one from either Palace would have been alive because the ki power reserves were exhausted millennia ago and they were the few places where we used mundane solar powerfor the defense systems. Given the state things are in I've desired to do a remote power down after giving them enough information about the current world so their defenses systems don't accidentally kill anyone. Two places are going to get a big surprise though ironically the main Palace will be the one found first."

"Just out of curiosity where are they?"

Beryl just smiled.

~*~PM~*~

In the Ténéré Tiniri, the remotest place of the Sahara Desert an imposing palace its decorative covering protected by its reflective shield appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Inside its AI was coming out of inactive mode. 'What the…?' The AI was confused. There was sand and next to no life for miles. But when it had gone into lockdown mode some 2,000 years after the great ki drain it had still been green. Sure there had been a decline in the rain fall over the last decade but… then it noticed the file sent with the defense systems stand down orders. Twelve thousand years. The Earth Kingdom had effectively been dead for twelve thousand freaking years. But it had gotten orders from the Royal line. The ki confirmed...then it noticed that the ki signature was already in its database. A queen who by all logic should be long dead. Thankfully the file explained how that was possible. From the basic details it knew that it wasn't going to be found soon. Good, it would need a lot of time to truly understand the patchwork quilt the Earth was now in.

Half a world away an MP ran up to a captain saluting. "Area secured, sir."

"Very good soldier." Captain Pratt studied the structure in front of him. It was like looking at something between the Disneyland Palace and its Neuschwanstein inspiration in terms of size. Problem he was going to have to explain just how in the hell this thing had popped up right outside the best known secret air force base in the world. "No sign of life?"

"Unless you count the very chatty AI, no sir. Plenty of corpses though. According to the AI the energy reserves for suspended animation capsules weren't designed for this length of time and failed about 500 years after the war between the Earth and Moon Kingdoms ended."

"Soldier, that would mean this thing has been here for 12,000 years minimum. How in hell do you miss something like that?"

"Perception filter according to the AI, sir."

"Perception filter? That sounds like something out of that British scifi program Doctor Who!"

"Yes, sir. And it gets worse. Based on the information Beryl sent it it believes it knows who the Greys are."

"What?" asked the captain his tone cold.

"Seems it believes the Greys are real, sir. As for Queen Beryl her first and only communication to it was to confirm the Earth Kingdom no longer exists and that all control and information it contains were now under the jurisdiction of the United States government. In essence Beryl abdicated all her claims as Queen of Earth and locked herself out of the data the AI had. Sir."

"What data?!"

"Seems the AI has been collecting public information since the days of radio. Even found a way to tap into both ARPANET and MILNET, sir." The MP frowned. "It wants to help and has requested any information we have on pilot endurance so to run better simulations of the aircraft it has designed. Sir."

The captain nodded and walked in. "Insignia identified. Captain. US Air force. How may I help you, sir?" asked a pleasant female voice.

"How detailed is your information on the Earth and Moon Kingdoms?"

"I have census data for Earth reaching back to the first 5,000 years though some of it is Kingdom information is more sketchy and entirely secondary."

~*~Author Note~*~

The title comes from the term "the moving finger having writ moves on". It's part of the lyrics of my favorite song in Rudolph's Shiny New Year. GURPS Time Travel came out in 1991 and if you wanted a one stop shop for all versions of time travel in fiction this was it. Its modern (and far more detailed) equivalent is GURPS Infinite Worlds.