Chapter Zero: Prologue
Colette was sound asleep in her bed. She was curled up in a ball hugging her fox tail when someone tried to jostle her awake. She ignored them and continued dreaming.
"Colette, it's time to wake up. Colette." The warm voice of her Father said.
Colette's ears twitched at hearing the nostalgic voice and she began to rise from her slumber, "Daddy? Is that really you?"
"Of course it's me kiddo, your Mother is waiting for you in the living room. We promised we'd teach you how to dance today, remember?"
Colette's eyes welled with tears, "I had the most terrible nightmare ever, daddy. You, Mom, and all our friends were dead. We were living in some hole in the ground hiding from Eggman." Colette let burst a dam of tears. "It was horrible. We were miserable without you."
"My poor little girl, come here…" Colette's Father held out his arms to envelope her in a loving embrace, and to ease her worries.
Colette hugged her father, admiring his twin tails as they cheerfully swayed about, for some reason, Colette felt that she had been missing this from her life for some time. Missing a feeling of safety that only loving parents can provide to their children after a terrible nightmare. Tears continued to spill forth from colletes eyes.
" There's no need to cry. Your Mother and I love you very much. We'd never go anywhere. How could we when we have such adorable children as the three of you."
Colette, having failed to gain control of her emotional outburst, begged her father to make a promise, "Promise! You and Mom need to promise me that you won't do anything dangerous.
The air was filled with a foreboding silence.
"Promise you'll stay with us. Promise you will stop trying to save the world and just be with us. Promise me, please!"
The twin tailed fox looked at his daughter, his heart maimed by her tears, his face displaying a bittersweet countenance. "My sweet little girl, you'll understand someday. Sonic and I have a lot of responsibility to help people-"
"-What about us? Don't you love us?"
"Of course I love you three. Your my whole world-"
"Then promise me! Promise you'll quit having adventures. That you, Mom, and Uncle Sonic, Aunt Amy will all stay with us. We'll be a family again. A happy family like in the stories."
"Of course Colette, that's what parents do. Now take my hand and let's go, your mother is waiting for us." Her Father's soothing and reassuring voice eased Colette's worries despite a nagging feeling in the back of her mind that something was not right. Though, Colette could not put her finger on what that something was.
Colette giggled as her Father guided her to the living room. She had always wanted to learn how to dance.
After arriving at the living room, a loving and feminine voice came forth and caused Colette to nearly break down in tears again. Why her Mothers voice caused this reaction she could not fathom and thus suffocated the feeling to the back most reaches of her mind.
"There's my little girl! Are you excited to learn to dance?"
Colette let go of her father's hand and ran, quite literally, blindly across the room to the voice and practically tackled the female Fox.
"Mom!"
Collete's Father walked up to his wife and daughter, "She had a terrible nightmare."
"Oh no." The Mother hugged her daughter then held her hands to give them a loving squeeze. "Your hands are so cold!" The Mother exclaimed as she rubbed them with her own to warm them. "Well, all is well now that we're together."
The Father stood next to his wife and put a hand on her back then said, "Well, Mrs. Prower, would you like the honor of teaching our little girl how to Waltz?"
The mother let go of her daughter and turned to her husband, "I think that honor is reserved to the Father. You go ahead and teach her, I'll stand by and be your cheerleader."
The Father took his daughter's hand and was about to escort her to the center of the room when Colette spoke, "Before we dance, could we… all hug one more time?"
"Of course, sweetheart." Colette was then sandwiched between her parents whom she loved more than anything in the world. The chill her body felt seemed for but a moment to vanish. Replashed with a warmth that only a Parent's love can provide.
"I'm so happy," Colette said.
Colette's body suddenly shook violently causing her to lose her balance and stumble around. Her parents were shocked and tried desperately to hold onto their precious little daughter but she soon was on the ground rolling about on cold and uncaring fabric.
"Wake up Colette." Her brother Benjamin 'Buster' Prowler said as he shook her until he saw her sit up in her bed.
Colette's facial expression was part disbelief, part shock, and part horror. Her white eyes, incapable of deciphering color or light, looked ahead, both literally and figuratively, into a dark abyss of sorrow and suffering that stretched out before her, endlessly.
"Why?" Was the only word that Colette managed to say.
"Anna has called a family meeting. She says it's important." Buster grabbed his sister's hand and walked her to the kitchen-living area and pulled out a seat and guided her down into it.
"Why? Why did you wake me?" Was all the emotionally devastated Colette could say.
"YOU WOKE HER UP?" Came the loud and angry reply from Buster's older sister, Annabella.
"You asked me to. You said it was important." Buster replied sharply. He then placed a bowl of mushrooms in front of his youngest sister then put a fork in her right hand and the bowls edge by her left hand.
"I didn't say to wake her up. I said to get Colette as soon as you could." She yelled back at him.
"How is that any different? I tried to wake her and when I couldn't I then gave her another ten minutes to sleep. You said it was important. So I woke her up just now like you asked. I didn't think you would get your panties in a knot over it." Buster argued.
Colette grabbed the bowl she had been given and blindly hurled it off the table. "Stop fighting! Mom and Dad would be ashamed."
The room fell silent, the only sound heard was that of a plastic bowl rolling on the ground then coming to a silent stop.
"I'm sorry for yelling." Annabella said.
"Me too." Buster admitted.
The room was silent for a moment more.
"So, what did you want to talk about Anna?"
Another silent second passed then Annabella spoke, "I have been re-reading my books and notes on quantum mechanics and other theories and I have come to a hypothesis I need your input on."
"Okay nerd, what is it- and give us the simple version."
"I want us to make a time machine."
Colette, still deep in her depression, perked up at the mention of time travel.
Buster waved off such a ridiculous notion, "Time travel isn't possible. That is just a bunch of fiction."
"Actually, the science was taken very seriously by many prominent scientists of the past and present, myself being one of them." Annabella said as she beamed with pride before continuing, "One of the few major obstacles in time travel is gathering enough energy to enable time travel in the first place. We have three Chaos Emeralds that have unfathomable power. With my understanding of physics, your knowledge of mechanical engineering, and Colette's computer science skills, we could create a time machine. At least in theory."
"So, what are you suggesting, that we make a time machine, go back in time, and prevent our parents and friends from being killed?"
"Well, yes." Annabella deadpanned. "I thought that was obvious?"
"And you think this is possible, like, actually possible?" Buster asked incredulously.
Annebella looked away at the corner of her vision as she did some mental mathematical calculations"... maybe? We won't know until we try."
"Okay, so, how do you know our actions in the past won't make us vanish from existence or cause something worse to come about?"
Annebella looked her brother dead in the eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled, then spoke, "I don't. If you two would rather not risk it, we can just go on living like this. Eating rancid tasting mushrooms from the forest while cherishing the few brief memories we have of our parents till we die a lonely, pathetic death in an underground safehouse."
Buster scoffed, "I get it. Things suck. You don't need to make us all even more depressed, and your plan is stupid by the way, it would be much simpliler if we went back in time and permanently dealt with Eggman. Save ourselves from the trouble he's caused..."
Annabella was shocked, "Are you suggesting we go back in time and kill an innocent child that has yet to cause any harm?"
"Done no harm? He killed our parents Anna. He killed Uncle Sonic and Aunt Amy too. By now he could have taken over the entire world with his robot army for all we know. Child or not, I don't care. The world is better off with some people dead."
Annebella looked at her brother with equal parts pity and horror, "So you want to... what? Go back in time, find Eggman, and do what exactly? Strangle him in his crib?"
"If that is what it takes to save our world from Eggman and bring back all the loved ones we had stolen from us, then yeah. I'll kill him. Pick your method."
"You're sick."
"Don't you dare call me sick. I'd be saving our parents. Saving our world. I am merely taking the most rational method of preserving the greatest quantity of life. If that takes squashing one rotten egg then so be it. That's the cost we have to pay to maintain civilization as we knew it. How long has Eggman terrorized the world? He should have been killed long ago, now look where we are. All because the adults we looked up to as children did not have the guts to get their hands dirty. I won't make that mistake!"
"Is that how you justify murder and preemptive assassinations? By serving the greater good? I hope for everyone's sake you never become a leader. Mom, Dad, Sonic, everyone would be disgusted with you. That's not how the Prower family does things."
Buster stood up, walked to the end of the room and opened a closet door and grabbed a shovel. He then slammed it on the ground. It loudly rang out as it clinked against the cold barren cement the floor was made of. "Why don't you go outside to their graves, dig them up, and ask how they think we should deal with Eggman?"
Colette, having sat silently the whole time, started to sob as she tried and failed to hold back her tears.
"Now you're making Colette cry…" Anna said in an attempt to shame her brother.
"Oh, please. She cries all the time. Besides, I bet she would agree with me, if it meant she would get to see Mom and Dad again... not literally of course."
Annabella was outraged, "What? She's seven years old. You can't ask her-"
"-Why not? She is a Prowler, she has a voice in what we choose to do. Isn't that what we agreed on? The three of us would become a team, Team Prower?"
Annabella thought and clenched her fists. Fine then, we'll let Colette be the deciding vote of how we are to handle this… your way or my way.
Colette spoke up, "I- I don't know. Please don't make me choose."
"She doesn't have to decide right now. Why don't you go into how this will work exactly." Buster said. "That's assuming you're not blowing hot air..."
Annabella glared at her brother's rude remark, "Fine."
Buster got his little sister another bowl of mushrooms, then took a seat next to Colette at their table, seated opposite of Anna.
Anna continued, "As I was saying, Time travel has to our knowledge never been done before. There are many theories in physics that argue upon the nature of existence, free will, or lack thereof, and how an individual experiences time. This is important when trying to formulate theories of time travel and their possible consequences and paradoxes. We could end up altering the causality of our world. Or we could end up in or creating an entirely new world or even thousands of world lines separate from our own. The problem is despite all our theories and measurements, chances are we'll never truly know how causality plays out through time travel until we take that leap through time, and even then we might not be cognisant of all or any changes. At the end of the day we are mortals and can only know what is in front of us, not what was, what is, or what will be. If an action in the past overwrites our reality and thus alters our memories then we truly never will know the mysteries of time travel as we will not be an observer to any changes. With that rant out of the way, the first concept you two need to understand is my favorite, retrocausality-"
"-STOP!" Yelled Buster. "Let me save us a whole lot of time. Just give us the important bits. Can we time travel with a Chaos Emerald?
"In theory... I'd hypothesize two chaos emeralds hooked up to a specialized machine would be the best means of achieving time travel. We might actually need more. One test will be to see if we can create a portal allowing for near instantaneous travel across space before we can create a machine that reaches across space-time. Even then I'm still nervous. This is all theory we are dealing with. It's going to be incredibly dangerous to test.
Buster nodded in agreement, "It would be very bad if we accidentally opened a portal to a black hole."
Anna used one finger to awkwardly tap her chin as she sheepishly smiled before she made a confession, "Well, about that. According to my research, we'll actually need to create black holes."
Buster blinked slowly taking in what he had just heard his sister say, "What. The. F-"
"-Well, actually, the science for that is pretty solid, you just need to entangle two black holes such that they share a single quantum state. This quantum entanglement ensures that whatever affects one will affect the other. Then you just kind of walk or jump through. I'm not yet sure how we get them to appear where we want them to or prevent them from horribly killing us, and that's assuming they are entangled the entire time, but I'm sure I could figure that out with some trial and error and a large quantity of mushrooms."
Buster was flabbergasted, he put his hands on his head and massaged his temples, "So, let me understand this. We… we...jump through… Into?… Into… into a black hole? Annabella, are you insane?"
"You're right. There is so much work to do and so many theories to test!" Annabella said, as her eyes glimmered and filled with joy. "The Black Hole Information Paradox… well, I guess that one will be obvious with the help of Mr. Mushroom." Anna laughed and snorted, as she picked up a mushroom and made it do a little dance on the table, then she spoke in a high pitch voice pretending to be the Mushroom. "Oh yes Anna, I love being a sacrifice for science! Throw me to my statistically likely doom!"
"Annabella. Please. Stop. You're scaring Colette and I." Buster said sincerely.
Annabella coughed awkwardly then continued, "Then we have the possible problem of black hole evaporation, though, the Chaos Emerald with its infinite amount of energy could perhaps be used to emit high levels of chaos radiation to stabilize a black holes possible loss of Mass... that should address that issue. Or not and we'll destroy the entire world. It's a coin toss. We should also find out what lies beyond the Event Horizon. Then-."
Buster snapped his fingers in front of Annabella, "-Hey, hey! Stop drooling. Come back to us Anna. We get it. Time travel is complicated. You know what isn't complicated but instead is bad and dangerous? Boring us to death."
Annabella wiped the drool off her face with her sleeve. "Sorry."
Buster turned to his youngest sister Colette who was now smelling her bowl of mushrooms with a dissatisfied look on her face, "What do you think Colette? What should we do?"
Colette continued to sniff at the bowl of cold, disgusting, mushrooms. The same kind they had eaten for the last couple years since their parents had been killed.
Benjamin "Buster" Prower and Annabella Prower waited for their sister's decision. Then she spoke in a somber tone, "I'm cold. I'm tired. I miss Mommy and Daddy, and I absolutely hate mushrooms. I don't care about anything but hugging Mom and Dad again. I don't care if it's our world or another. They're our parents regardless of what world we are in. I am fine with us doing anything and everything to save them as long as it does not involve hurting other people. Mom and Dad may be dead, but we're still their children. We need to make them proud." Colette, having said her piece, pushed her bowl of mushrooms away from her as her stomach rumbled in protest.
"Well, Prowers. There it is. Annabella will work out the science and test the theories needed for time travel. I will engineer the time machine, and Colette will code the program we'll use to enable portals and time travel using Anna's proven theories. We can do this. We're going to build a time machine and save our parents!" Buster said triumphantly.
"What if we can't get it to work with the two Emeralds we have?" Colette asked.
"Then we'll steal them from this world or another." Annabella answered.
Colette's body involuntarily shook from a combination of sadness, fatigue, malnutrition, and the cold. Suddenly she felt a warm blanket being wrapped around her. She heard her brother kneel down next to her and grab her hand.
"Colette, I swear I will do whatever it takes to save Mom and Dad. We will hear their voices again someday. I promise you this."
Colette's lip began to tremble while she grabbed the blanket she had been given with her free hand and pulled it tighter around her shivering body. She was too tuckered out to shed any more tears, "Mom and Dad had promised us they'd always be there for us…"
Buster squeezed his sister's hand tighter, "I mean it."