Section 1. When Physicists Sleep: A brief of history of Chronology and how it came to be

Chronology was born virtually overnight.

In the year -360, next to nothing was known about the physical nature of time. While most other sciences were advancing steadily, with the discovery of cells and the starting glimmers of organic chemistry, developments in physics had largely stalled for some fifty years. As it stagnated, public interest and cross-national funding initiatives waned, and attention pivoted to focus on more exciting research disciplines.

It was thus largely a neglected field when the -350s arrived. This allowed for several, small discoveries to go largely unnoticed until one final paper wove them all together and grabbed the world’s attention.

The first of these events was in -357, when a team of scientists in Epidatia built the first suction rotar. Now the most important instrument in all of science, the first rotar they built was a primitive device. Using only kelzanite’s attractive force, compared to the repulsive rotars now in use, the scientists built an ingenious machine that allowed for the extreme acceleration of subatomic particles within an internal, circular chamber, reaching rates of up to 8000 m/s^2.

The second event occurred in -356, when a chronologist named Kierthrin Maestrid of Rhikal published a paper entitled On the Nature of Time. This paper proposed an entirely new model for the physical workings of time by positing a hypothesis Kierthrin termed ‘the theory of temporal consequentialism’. While the implications of this postulation were enormous, the paper received little attention upon its release. The little response it did generate within the scientific community was sceptical and dismissive in nature.

In -354, the rumblings of the impending scientific revolution finally trickled into public notice when the Epidatian scientists experimenting with their new suction rotar announced a miraculous discovery: when they accelerated hydrogen nuclei within their rotar, the particles multiplied. The effect was brief but unmistakable. For a few milliseconds, their instruments could detect multiple protons within the chamber where only one proton existed. 

Finally, physics had recaptured the public eye. The Heptarchy was abuzz. A plethora of new particle physics laboratories opened, with governments across the realms funnelling funding into the race to discover the answer at the heart of this mystery.

No one could have predicted that the answer would come, not from one of these flashy new labs with the world’s most cutting-edge technologies at its disposal, but from a scientist asking the age-old question:

“What exactly is this thing we call time?”

Continue on to Section 2: The Theory of Temporal Consequentialism (-353) to learn more about the theory that unleashed the chronological revolution.