Myst: Ages Beyond Earth

[Recumen]

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You pull your slightly charred leather gloves taut against your hand and briefly admire their detail for a moment. They look like the used, burnt gloves of some blacksmith. Utterly fascinating. Life is good. And you have not even started to live in full, yet. You feel as though your entire purpose should be vested in the trials that lie ahead in the future.

And the future holds in store many things. Time to go to work. Before you is a linking book, the title on the cover reading Westminster. You almost reverently open the book to its third page, where the revolving image of the age's main plaza it displayed. A plaza in front of a large palace, with many umbrella-stand tables with chairs scattered about, looking upon a horizon of bleak grey, dotted with immense, towering structures upon the horizon.

"Yahvo's Will Be Done." You say with the barest hint of a smile as you reach out to lay a hand upon the linking panel.

[Xartarin]

6:16 A.M., English Countryside

Hellen awoke, her face in a pile of papers. She blinked a few times, and looked around, still drowsy. Scattering papers, Hellen felt around for the digital clock on the table and pulled it close to her face. 6:17 A.M. Way too early. As she put the clock back, her hand struck something hard on the table that wasn't there before. More alert, she grabbed it and inspected it closely. It was too hard to see in the dark, so she got up and flicked on the lights.

It was a key, designed to look like the hand of a clock. "Cute," she said to herself, and started remembering the dream. These keys would grant immortality, and ultimate knowledge of the Art. Her task was clear, then.

6:37 A.M. Earth Time, 2:30 A.M. Age Time, Westminster Age Clocktower

There was a clock face on each wall, and in one corner a large blue Police Box. In another corner was something that looked like a trash can, but that was misleading. It was more like a trash chute, leading deep underground.

Hellen walked over to the trash chute, and opened it. She cast the key in, sending it tumbling down the depths of the clock tower. It fell underground, to where all her trash went; the geothermal plant underneath her palace. The key plunged into the lava, and slowly sank through the molten earth.

7:02 A.M., English Countryside

Back in her secluded abode, Hellen looked at the desk she had fallen asleep on. Notes for worlds, some taxes... something about a fantasy story involving werewizards. She reached into the pile and took out some linking books that had suddenly appeared there. That means her peers had her linking books as well. They wouldn't risk going in themselves, but would probably hire an agent or two to do the dirty work for them. There was no time to lose.

She got onto the computer and logged onto her forum, an online community made specifically for those well-versed in the Art, writers and agents alike. After glancing over a few topics about some newbies messing up their ages and getting people killed, she quickly made a new topic.

Username: GBgroundhog

Topic Title: Emergency Agent Request! Age protection, £19 an hour [NEGOTIABLE], possible multiple jobs

Need an agent quickly for protecting my age, must be able to respond and start the job within the day! (going on British timezone, just FYI) There's also a chance I might need you to infiltrate some other jobs, but we can negotiate a wage change in that event.

Respond with an offer and I will email you further contact information. Don't worry about wear you live; I will pay for airplane fare and chances are I have a linking book somewhere near you.

She sat back from the computer. Now she just had to wait. She walked downstairs, outside, locked the door behind her and decided to kill some time at the nearby market. It would be very rude not to meet her agent with a nice meal, after all.

((This is totally her avatar.))

[Star Kirby]

8:43 AM - Idaho, United States

It was usually his habit to wake up a bit earlier, but Mest felt that he deserved the extra sleep after staying up a few hours later than usual. Coffee in hand and a piece of toast in his mouth, Mest flipped his laptop open, pressing the 'ON' button and munching idly as the computer booted itself up. He typed the password in, logging on and began to go through his daily online routine. Emails, check. Ah, there was the appointment about coming in for an interview. The rest were spam and he deleted those quickly.

Out of curiosity and boredom, Mest went to an online forum he visited every so often. It was generally a community for Writers who wanted to advertise their Ages and stuff, and he was pretty interested in that kind of thing. To his surprise, he saw a recent topic that was slightly different from the usual ones, and he found his interest piqued after reading the contents.

Oh, what the hell. The interview can wait. £19 an hour? How much is that in dollars...

[William]

10:23 AM, Outskirts of Moscow

"Wake up, Miss Stewart", Drakforz said, loudly shaking the chains that kept the door to her cell shut. "Wake up. You are in no position to be sleeping soundly." He was standing on the dungeon under his mansion - a long corridor with about twenty cells, ten on either side, with a single staircase leading down to it hidden under a trapdoor - that had been there since the mansion was built.

"I know very well this feels like a very early time for you, the area you usually reside in taken into account, and it is rather impolite for me to wake you up like this - however, after you tried to infiltrate into my house and called me, and I quote, 'a dreadful villain who deserves punishment'", he said, with almost an amused tone to his voice, " I find myself strongly inclined to put my usual courteousness aside."

"Now see, I am not actually a villain. If I were, I would have had you killed a while ago." Drake paced slowly down the corridor, briefly leaving Vanessa's line of sight; being chained to her bed, and the bed itself being bolted to the far wall, she couldn't actually walk over to the bars to see where he was going.

"But since you probably don't want that", he said, raising his voice in order to be heard from all the way down the corridor, "I have a - *hngh* - proposition." He seemed to put a fair bit of effort into something, which was followed by what sounded awfully like a formerly-jammed drawer being forced open, which was, in fact, exactly what happened. Drake removed a feather-like object from one of his pockets and placed it inside the drawer, swapping it over for a simple, if slightly big, key. After moving the drawer back in place, he started heading back to Vanessa's cell.

"You will work for me for a certain period of time", he said, one hand on the padlock that kept the chains in place, the other exposing the key he had just taken from the drawer, "and then I will let you go. How does that sound?" Drakforz gave a toothy smile, but not one that showed any particular joy or content.

[Star Kirby]

10:30 AM - Le Restaurant Générique Français, Oregon, United States

A reservation in the restaraunt kept Mest and Hellen's wait to a minimum. Which was good, because Hellen apparently refused to talk about the details of the job until they were seated. After only a couple minutes of conversation restricted to idle chatter, they were shown a seat in the fancy restaraunt with the unpronouncable French name.

Glancing at the menu, Hellen said, "Thank you so much for responding on such short notice. You'll see in a bit that time is really of the essence here."

"It's not a big deal," Mest waved a hand dismissively. "I didn't have anything important to do."

"Good to hear. This restaraunt always takes a long time to prepare food, so we should have ample time to go over the particulars of the mission," Hellen replied, picking up the menu and flipping a page. "Slow service all around, really, but I don't mind too much. Now, to understand why this mission is important, I'll have to tell you what's at stake."

"I, along with two other writers, have received three keys bestowed upon us by our teacher. The keys can be used in his age to grant the user immortality and ultimate knowledge of The Art. Each one of us is trying to collect the three keys."

Mest looked at Hellen as if trying to decide whether or not she was joking. "Immortality? Like, honest-to-god immortality? What kind of Writer is able to grant something that defies life itself? Isn't that a little much?"

"He also talked in our dreams and basically teleported keys and linking books to us, so I think he might be God or something like that." After saying that, Hellen got a look on her face that made it clear that the previous sentence didn't sound stupid in her head. "Basically, our master was a great man... god... mangod, and I don't doubt his words. Although sometimes he laid it on a bit thick with his whole 'oh I love all my children you are my greatest work' schtick."

"...Uh," Mest said eloquently, rubbing the back of his head. "Well, ignoring the religious controversy over the apparent proof of existence of a singular God... You were saying something about a couple other Writers? And some stuff about keys?"

"Right, yes. I have a key, and two other writers have a key. Getting all three keys and bringing them to our master's age means getting immortality and ultimate knowledge and all that good stuff. Here's where you come in. The other writers are going to send agents into my age to try and take my key. Your job is to guard the key from them."

"Oh. Um, guarding stuff? I'm not exactly... bodyguard, er, itemguard material. If you're talking about like physically guarding stuff. Can't you put it in a safe or whatever?"

"Not really. I already destroyed the key."

"Wait what? Then why do I need to guard it...?"

"I know you have experience in Ages, but not in any like mine, I assure you. The problem here is that in my age, the flow of time obeys different rules than in our world. I destroyed the key this morning, but it's possible an agent that enters my age will still be able to retrieve it, via time travel," Hellen said.

"In my Age, you can travel throughout time within a 24 hour span of time; one day, on the London clock. That's why time is of the essence. The other writers will have their agents enter my age today, if they want to be able to retrieve the key. If we want to intercept them, you must enter my Age today as well."

"Our goal is to run out the clock. Get them out of today and knock them into tomorrow, and seal away my key in oblivion forever."

"Jeez, this time stuff seems troublesome. Creative, though. I don't have quite that much experience, but apparently people tend to stay away from time-centric Ages because it gets too confusing to keep track of. That's pretty impressive." Mest leaned back in his chair, apparently thinking it over. "Well, I already said I'd take this job, and I'd look pretty stupid if I backed out now. So all I have to do is keep other people from getting to the key until tomorrow?"

"Trust me, it took a long time to perfect paradox-free time travel. I lost quite a few Ages to those nasty contradictions," Hellen said, and winced at some memories. "Those poor agents... erm, anyway, sort of. Time in the Age and out of it is synced up in specific ways, specific to the person. You have to waste enough of an agent's time that they can't just re-enter the Age after being spat out, and you have to hold them until they cross over into the next day, while making sure you don't do so yourself until all the agents are gone."

"Uh. Sooo, how would I go about doing that? I mean, if they crossed into the next day in the Age, wouldn't I do so too?"

"No, you can just time travel. Like, let's say you cage up a guy at 11 PM in the Age, which you can do because there are brigs there. You can either load up all the other agents in there at once, via time travel, or escape to an earlier point in the day also via time travel."

"Is it possible that the other Agents would figure out how to work your time travel thing too?"

"Yes, that's why all of this is necessary. They might travel back in time and retrieve the key from me when I destroyed the key earlier today, and then leave the Age with the key. That's why I need you to go into the Age and make sure they don't do that."

"That would be pretty annoying. So how do you do your fancy little time travel?"

"In my Age, the flow of time obeys clocks instead of the other way around. The larger the clock, the more space changing the time on it will affect. My copy of Big Ben, for example, controls the flow of time for the entire Age." That's why you can only travel within a 24 hour block of time; all the clocks only have 24 hours on them!"

A lot of the patrons of the restaraunt were starting to get annoyed at the two, but Hellen either didn't notice or didn't care. A waiter approached their table, and asked for their order.

Hellen pointed out her order on the menu, able to see the picture but not able to read the text on the menu. Something to do with eggs. Eggs Norwegian, the waiter told her. She ordered it, and the waiter turned to take Mest's order.

Mest squinted at the menu. He usually didn't eat at these vaguely foreign restaurant, opting for cooking stuff himself. Even if it was instant ramen sometimes. "I'll have this... What is it, a crepe? This crepe-looking thing, and some coffee."

"Certainly, sir," The waiter said, and walked away with their orders.

Hellen looked at the ceiling for a little bit, and said, "Hm, what was I just saying, again?"

"Something about how the size of your clocks affects the change in time?" Mest prompted.

"Erm, yes," Hellen said, that statement not helping all too much. "There are also some police boxes around, and being it one will shield you from the effects of time travel. Get it? Police boxes?"

"Uh... Boxes?" Mest had never heard of anything referred to as a police box before, much less what one was. "Do you mean a police station? You know, a building that police officers work in and stuff."

Hellen grumbled and sighed, and said "Nevermind. They look like blue phone booths, labeled 'Police Box'. You'll know them when you see them. Aside from that, there's nothing else you really need to know about the time travel, since you don't have to worry about paradoxes. You can't change established past on Earth; other than that, anything goes."

"Oh." Wait, are they just phone booths then? Feeling slightly stupid, Mest hurried onto another topic. "When you say that they shield you from the effects of time, do you mean things like memory and aging or whatever? But if you're changing time, you wouldn't be in a police box, right? You'd be at the clocks."

"The police boxes usually have consoles to control the clocks inside them, and they protect you from the effects of time travel. You alter the clocks to make the rest of the age the way it was at 3 in the morning, and the police boxes bring you along for the ride."

Mest nodded in understanding. "I see. Well, I hope this doesn't turn out to be too complicated. Is there anything you can tell me about these other Agents who are going to be after the keys?"

"I don't have any information on the agents, unfortunately," Hellen said. "The other writers may not even have recruited them yet. Just know that there will be other people in the age trying to get ahold of Big Ben and change its clock in order to retrieve the key I destroyed this morning."

"Okay then," Mest replied. "So I guess you want me to get in the Age as soon as possible. Is there anything else that I should know about?"

"Not much else," Hellen said. "You'll want to contact past Hellens you see in the age, but be warned as they won't know who you are. They'll help you get around and be valuable as backup, if you can convince them to help you. Also keep in mind that you'll be entering from a different linking book than the other agents. You'll get into Big Ben easily, they'll have to take the hard way in."

"Hm... You said you already destroyed the key, so you just want to keep people from figuring out how to turn time back in the first place to get it? If I were to go into the age right now, the key technically wouldn't exist, am I right?"

"Yes, but the agents will be entering my world, so there's a good chance they'll discover the time travel. It's kind of.... blatant."

"Ah, okay then." Mest rubbed the back of his head, slightly anxious about his task. "I guess that's it. When should I get going?"

"We have some time," Hellen said. "After brunch, feel free to get as prepared as you want. As long as you enter the age before midnight falls in London, everything is fine."

"Right. Well, I'll do my best."

[Xartarin]

10:24 AM, Outskirts of Moscow

With a groan, Vanessa sat up, finding herself bound to a bed. Not a very good situation to find yourself in, first thing in the morning. Wanting to rub her eyes, Vanessa listened patiently to the speech of Drakforz, who was offering a job in exchange for her freedom.

He's probably just gonna kill me if I don't take the job, Vanessa thought. Guess there's only one real option.

"Sounds like I don't have a choice," Vanessa said. "I'll take the job."

11:20 AM, Hellen's Office

Hellen and Mest drove to the University of Oregon, where Hellen's linking book was. They walked upstairs to her office, a small office with a shelf of books and some knick-knacks. A model of the time machine from H.G. Wells' novel sat on her desk. "I teach some writing classes here during the winters and springs. Here, I'll get the linking book, you take a seat."

There were a few comfy, padded seats around the office, and Hellen walked over to her desk and unlocked one of the drawers. She pulled out a slim, plain-looking book and laid it on top of the desk. After a couple turns of the page, she opened it to a picture of a simple room, with a door at the end.

"I'm sure you know how one of these works," Hellen said. "When you're in, find my past self. I'll be at the top of the clocktower at around 2 in the morning. She won't know about you, so explain the situation. She'll be able to help you with stopping the enemy agents. Good luck."

[Star Kirby]

2:56 AM, Somewhere in Florida, John's Room or Whatever

As it was an ungodly hour in the morning to be receiving calls, John was most likely asleep.

Nevertheless, his phone rang.

It rang, and rang again, but John most likely ignored it, because who in their right mind would call in the middle of the night (or morning, technically, for those nitpickers)? Anyway, the point was that it went to voicemail.

An irritatingly cheerful and loud voice began speaking as the recording started. "HELLO THERE! Hi! I hope I'm not calling too early, but apparently not since it seems like you're out. If I got the timezones right, it should be almost ten in the morning, and people are usually awake at that time! Maybe you went out for a walk? Morning walks are good! Exercising is good for the body! And soul! But mostly the body. "

"Ah! Sorry, I totally forgot to introduce myself. My name's Nimue Nabula, pleased to meet you! Over voicemail, anyway. I found you on some website for Agents, and I'm hoping you could help me out a bit! You see, I'm a Writer, and I need a little bit of help. By the way, it's kind of dangerous to put your personal information on the internet but it's how I got your number, so I can't decide whether I should lecture you or thank you! Um, well, anyway, I'm a Writer and I'd like to ask you to take a job! I realize this seems a bit out of the blue, but it's really really important, and I bet it'll be fun for you. Right? Right?!"

"Please call me back at *this number* soon, like, ASAP. Really. Because there's not a lot of time. I'll pay you pretty well! For the job, I mean. Not for calling me. I'm not like that!"

"Have a nice morning!"

No sane person would probably let a voicemail like that run on for so long, but for the sake of hilarity, let's say John did.

11:20 AM, Hellen's Office

Mest took a moment to compose himself, messing around with his phone and watch. He'd brought along a watch, because it was probably going to be really helpful to have a watch in the Age, and the phone because it was an iPhone except not so that he wouldn't get sued, and it had a bunch of useful features. Alarms and stopwatches and that sort of stuff, you understand. "It should be London time when I get in, right?" he asked, adjusting the time. "Around... what is it, 7:20 PM? Well, okay then."

He placed his hand on the linking book's picture and flashed a grin. "I'll do my best."

And then he was in the Age.

[Xartarin]

19:20 Age Time, 11:20 Oregon Time, Westminster Subway Station

Mest appeared in the middle of a dingy, barely-lit subway stop. There were stairs leading to the surface behind him. In front of him was a parked subway, unmoving, with no one entering it. The door was open. There was a bench with a stand to his right, with a trash can beside it. There were a few restaurants backing the wall, but they were vacant and unlit. To his left, there was a device.

The device looked like one of those music-sampling stands they used to have in the music sections of bookstores. It was like a desk with a tape recording in it, and a pair of headphones permanently attached. There was a chair in front of the "desk", and there were play, pause, rewind, and fast-forward buttons implanted into the machine. There was no record button, and the tape could not be removed without force.

11:21, Hellen's Office

Hellen breathed a sigh of relief, and put the linking book Mest disappeared into back on the shelf. She took out another book, and laid it on the desk. She walked over to the door of her office and locked it, and walked back to her desk. Then Hellen opened up the linking book, placed her hand on it, and disappeared.

[William]

2:56 AM, Somewhere in Florida, Hotel San Tramonto, Room 215

John heard the phone ringing and tentatively reached to his right, vaguely recalling that was where he had left it. His hand was met by soft carpet. He felt his way around himself a little, and noticed there was carpet all around him, and his naked body was pressed against it by a heavy black suitcase that rested over his torso, pushing most of the air off his body. It was his own suitcase.

John tried to look around and make off his surroundings, but there was no source of light anywhere, so his eyes couldn't adapt to the darkness. Slowly, very, very slowly, he managed to push himself sideways, reversing the situation and overtaking his suitcase. Now he was lying a few inches away from the ground and oxygen flooded his lungs. It was painful, but also relieving. Knowing you are alive after a night you have no memories of is always a good thing.

But anyway, at that point, Nimue started talking. At first her voice and tone made John cringe a little, but as soon as she mentioned Agents and Writers, he sat up brusquely and hit his forehead against the side of a desk, falling back over his suitcase, producing a loud CRACK. With a loud groan, John touched his forehead. He couldn't actually see anything, but he felt something warm and, taking his hand to his mouth, felt a strong metallic taste. Knowing for sure it was blood, John turned sideways, off the suitcase, and, juggling his attention between Nimue's voice and feeling his way around the round, crawled towards what he expected was the bathroom door.

After what felt like an excruciating search over several hours - which actually took only a few minutes, since it ended right after Nimue was done speaking - John felt a hard vertical surface and knocked on it. Felt like wood. Sounded like wood. The walls weren't made of wood, so it was definitely a door. John hoped it was the bathroom's door.

He slowly got up, placed his hand on the doorknob, and turned.

A cleaning lady, carrying a pair of drenched and yellow-stained bed sheets, was walking down the dimly lit corridor just as John did so. First, she was surprised by the fact anyone would go out of their room at a time like this. Then, she was surprised there was a tall adult man, butt-naked with a lot of blood on his face and shoulders, standing at his doorway. Surprise such she couldn't hold herself back, and she screamed. John screamed back at her and slammed the door shut, punching the light switch he now knew was to his left, and locking the door. The bright light hurt his eyes, but he sighed, relieved that the darkness was gone.

Scanning his room briefly, John noticed it was quite a mess. The bed was turned over, the nightstand was carefully balanced over a jar over the bed, with a cheap painting lying over that and a dozen pens piercing through it, making it look like a miniature table with too many legs, his cellphone balanced on top of that.

John shook his head and decided not to try and explain why the room looked like this, instead grabbing his cellphone and heading to the bathroom. He dialed back Nimue's number and turned the loud speaker on. He placed it by the sink as he cleaned and applied a gauze to his forehead.

"Judging by the way she spoke, she'll pick it up after the next ring," John told himself, just as the phone rang for the second time.