V-Time

V-Time (which had many possible meanings, among them Vascular-Time and Vicinity-Time) was a conceptual weapon developed by the Superiors. A cosmic process initiated via a surgical experiment on Chris Cwej, V-Time marked the end of W-Time, more commonly known as the War in Heaven. (PROSE: The V Cwejes)

History

Background

According to common understanding, the War in Heaven ended with the destruction of both the Great Houses of the Time Lords and their unnamed enemy. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) The resulting, post-War universe had no Gallifrey; consequently, supernatural events became more common for a time. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) Eventually, the planet was restored. During this period, it was known as the Base of Operations, and its ruling Houses, now calling themselves the Superiors, were considered the victors of the War. (PROSE: A Bright White Crack)

The V-Time Experiment

During his third incarnation, the regen-inf soldier Chris Cwej, who had served the Great Houses throughout the War and been used as the prototype for their Cwejen army, was summoned to the Base of Operations to undergo another radical procedure, the V-Time Experiment. Inside Duskeriall Palace, a Superior Surgeon stripped Cwej of his flesh and transferred his consciousness to a block of the silicate lagh. This would be used to create a computer, the Vicinity, which the transformed Cwej would inhabit as an artificial intelligence, capable of possessing the bodies of other Cwejen. During the operation, the Surgeon told Cwej that the War had been an inevitable result of history balancing the Superiors with an equal but opposite Enemy, and that the solution was to "divide the War's W-Time into V-Time, leaving just the Superior perspective on reality". Cwej did not understand why the Surgeon was still speaking of the War in the present tense, nor how his surgical procedure related to the structure of history.

The Surgeon explained that the Cwejen were merely the first assets to be repurposed, and that they were being made into a cosmic circulatory system, Vascular-Time. The Enemy's artificial 0-Time had previously led the Superiors to develop several doomed artificial consciousness, including I-Time (an entity based on "ancient android designs", and designed to prevent malicious histories, but which became a malicious history itself) and IV-Time (an accidental Superior copy who, after a mutative encounter with Plasmites, contracted a desire to become human, which left him vulnerable to the Thousand Young.) V-Time was an attempt to reverse the strategy of IV-Time: the human Cwej elevated to something greater. During the Experiment, Cwej had a vision in which the Ursine Brood, a group of Cwejen, told him that the Superiors' method of rebirth, "Change", only affected mortals on the superficial level of body and mind, and that "V-Time is the opposite, something so un-surface-level it eliminates the need for a permanent surface." The Surgeon also hinted that V-Time would soon flow into the Superiors themselves, when they were repurposed into a "singular neural mass". During the procedure's hallucinatory climax, all of Cwej's possible selves told him that V-Time meant "Vicinity-Time, for we'll be in Vicinity to everyone in need". (PROSE: The V Cwejes) The newly disembodied Cwej was given the designation Cwej-V, which he understood to stand for Cwej-Vicinity. (PROSE: A Bright White Crack)

After the Experiment

Over the following twelve years, Cwej-V was one of the Superiors' most important agents in the Totality, performing countless military missions, and otherwise dwelling in the virtual world of the Vicinity. Cwej's travels intersected with various realities, including those of the Washington town Deptford County, (PROSE: Fountain of Youth ^[+]Loading...["Fountain of Youth (short story)","Fountain of Youth"]) the transtemporal adventuress Iris Wildthyme, (PROSE: Flickering Flame ^[+]Loading...["Flickering Flame (short story)","Flickering Flame"]) the works of the pulp writer Clark Ashton Smith, (PROSE: (When I Remember ^[+]Loading...["When I Remember __________ (short story)"]) and the 10,000 Dawns, (PROSE: And Today, You ^[+]Loading...["And Today, You (novel)"], etc.) "each its own Totality"; foreseeing these events, the Surgeon said, "And which letter represents the meeting of points better than V? V-Time is thus the conscious weaponisation of the crossover."

After the Superiors destroyed the Vicinity, Cwej found himself "free of V-Time". However, he then stole a faulty prototype of the Vicinity and used his knowledge of V-Time to restore it. (PROSE: The Aftermath ^[+]Loading...["The Aftermath (short story)"]) Only when exchanging stories with a data ghost of his friend Kwol inside the rebuilt Vicinity did Cwej clearly remember the V-Time Experiment. (PROSE: The V Cwejes ^[+]Loading...["The V Cwejes (short story)","The V Cwejes"]) After returning to reality, Cwej resigned from service of the Superiors, but remained connected to the Vicinity and V-Time. Cwej also learned his actions had inspired a Cwejen Uprising. (PROSE: Rebel Rebel ^[+]Loading...["Rebel Rebel (short story)","Rebel Rebel"])

"V-Time surges" continued to run backwards through history from the far future. One such surge, whose coming to Earth in October 2020 was forecasted by P.R.O.B.E.'s Operation World Salad, also hit Gendar on the way there. Giles also speculated that it was the reason one Cyberon whose transmaterialisation from a far-future location had failed had ended up bouncing back to 24 September 2020 Derby, although this was not the only possible explanation for this event. (PROSE: The Blue Scream of Death ^[+]Loading...["The Blue Scream of Death (short story)","The Blue Scream of Death"])