As on Earth, there were a lot of special temporal locations on Durus.
Watershed provided the planet with water, while the broken portal released
enough waste heat to warm the entire surface, and Gaspunui created
breathable air. There were other places that weren’t so helpful. When
Savitri, Escher, and Rothko were living together during the first
Triumvirate era, the former went off to hunt for copperoot, which tasted
exactly as they sounded, but they were a good source of carbohydrates. When
she returned to camp, she learned that she had been gone for a whole week.
The other two searched for her all over, but couldn’t find her. For her,
however, only hours had passed. They knew they had to understand the
discrepancy. After some sleuthing, they realized she had walked through a
crevice in the ground, where time moved much, much slower than the rest of
the world. A few seconds in there meant days for everyone else. This made it
a very dangerous hazard, so they spent weeks out there, filling it in as
best they could, just in case other people found themselves trapped there,
and didn’t know what they were in for. Escher and Rothko would go on to warn
Hark about its properties, but they never told anyone from Springfield about
it. They knew that some would use it as a weapon, and that it was just best
to hope no one ever discovered it again, as if that were possible. They
couldn’t keep it a secret from Effigy. In 2021, time was nearing for Escher
and Rothko to return to Earth. Their dealings with certain people in town
earned them this right, and only them. Others would be put on the list to
make the journey, but power was scarce, so no one was certain whether the
machine they built would work more than once, if that.
Hogarth Pudeyonavic was the machine’s inventor, but the one she built was
destroyed during the Deathfall. This was what gave her her time affliction,
where she would spontaneously and uncontrollably blow up, and be sent
randomly across time and space. When she, Hilde, and Hark accidentally
jumped five years into the future—which some theorize was partly due to
Hogarth’s affliction—they left the plans for her machine in the past, hidden
away in the library. A few Springfielders discovered these plans while they
were gone, and took it upon themselves to recreate what she had used to
bring them here intact in the first place. Now it was ready to be used, and
they wanted Escher and Rothko to be the ones to escape. Effigy had other
plans. The only reason she hadn’t tried to get to Earth before now was that
she wanted the portal to bring all of her people into this universe first.
She spent a great deal of her life trying to make this happen, and she was
thwarted at every attempt. Perhaps the answer would be on Earth, but this
machine was the only way to find out. Of course, no one would have let her
go, so she had to take matters into her own hands. She waited until Escher
was alone, then she abducted him, and dragged him to the Time Crevice. There
she left him for the better part of a day, which was more than enough time
for her to alter her appearance to look like him, and take his place in
front of the machine. Because of the time difference, when Escher finally
made it all the way back out of the time trap, over a hundred and eighty
years had passed. He returned to a world he didn’t understand, but he was
welcomed there.
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